Web-based framework for improving geriatric education

Abstract

Despite the growth in the elderly population, physicians with special geriatric training and certification number only 9,000 out of 650,000 doctors in the United States. The flexibility and increasing availability of the Internet makes it an ideal avenue for addressing the educational needs of health care providers to improve the health and care of older adults. We performed an Internet search using popular search engines. This yielded between 321 and 358,000 websites about geriatrics and 164 to 175,000 about geriatric education. This paper reviews popular health and medical Web sites to determine geriatric educational content and proposes a structure for an "ideal" geriatric Web site that would provide resources and enhance training for allied health professionals, physicians in training and community doctors in practice. We also propose a framework addressing the design and content for developing a geriatric specific website. We use this framework to propose a prototype resource on falls and gait instability.