Systematic review: helping the young to understand the old. Teaching interventions in geriatrics to improve the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of undergraduate medical students

Abstract

It is unclear whether geriatrics-specific educational interventions lead to improvement in students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes and whether successful interventions possess any consistent features. This review examines the effect of educational interventions on undergraduate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in geriatric medicine and concludes that a wide range of innovative designs have the potential to improve each of these parameters, although evidence of interventions that improve student skills is lacking, and further research is necessary to confirm the efficacy of specific teaching strategies in geriatrics.