Geriatricized Clinical Skills Checklist
Our longitudinal, integrated curriculum focuses on the development of clinical practice behaviors that reflect geriatric care principles utilized across the lifespan. There are four principle areas: communication skills; functional assessment and intervention; social setting assessment and intervention; and therapeutic review and management. In the first two years of pre-clerkship training, all students learn history taking, physical examination, and professional communication behaviors through a behavioral checklist approach. Checklists for the complete medical history, complete physical examination, problem oriented examination, and chronic illness examination are provided. Through routine incorporation, the desired behaviors have two years of reinforced performance allowing creation of good practice habits. Subsequently, students carry these geriatricized guidelines for patient encounters into their required clinical rotations of the MS3, MS4 years of training. These habits of using geriatric principles across the lifespan are further reinforced by serving as the basis of the required Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) at the end of the MS1, MS2 and MS3 years of training.
Complete History Checklist: This behaviorally explicit checklist provides query examples for the novice to learn a comprehensive medical history encompassing history of present illness, functional history, past medical history, social history and family history.
Complete Physical Examination Checklist: This behaviorally explicit checklist provides information for the novice to learn a comprehensive head to toe physical examination with a review of system leading each section.
Problem Oriented Examination: This behaviorally explicit checklist provides information for MS1 to MS3 level of learners to conduct a problem oriented patient encounter for a patient presenting with a new symptom.
Chronic Illness Examination: This behaviorally explicit checklist provides information for MS1 to MS3 level of learners to conduct a chronic illness patient encounter.
The checklists provided are meant to be versatile and may be used individually or collectively, in part or in entirety, within a clinical skills course, during clerkship rotations and/or as part of an assessment process such as Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs). An advantage of these behaviorally explicit checklists is that they facilitate conversations among faculty and students as to observable performance expectations. Students and faculty find viewing and scoring videos of performance an effective means of appreciating the objective nature of the criteria.