Education

Training clinicians in age-friendly healthcare

The Division of Geriatric Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has multiple educational programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical educational levels across Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the VA Tennessee Valley Health System.  

At the undergraduate level, we provide excellence in training for Vanderbilt University School of Medicine students. The inpatient geriatrics Acute Care for Elders (ACE) unit trains second year Internal Medicine clerkship students. Our faculty run the Integrated Science Course on Healthy Aging & Quality Dying, a course that integrates foundational sciences into the clinical context of geriatrics and palliative medicine. For senior medical students, we offer an Acting Internship on the ACE Unit. We also run an Advanced Clinical Elective in geriatrics which exposes student to nursing home, ambulatory, and inpatient experiences.

At the graduate medical education level, our ACE Unit trains Internal Medicine residents and Geriatric Medicine fellows on holistic care of acutely ill hospitalized older adults. Learners get to rotate on one of only 43 ACE Units in the country, and one of only four that are certified age-friendly. The service is lead by a geriatrician in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team. Our fellows teach our innovative, homegrown curriculum, FACETS, to our housestaff and students.

Our fellowship offers exceptional and innovative programming for Internists and Family Medicine physicians training to become geriatricians. 
Continuing medical education programming offers Division Grand Rounds and Morbidity, Mortality, and Improvement conferences. 
Through the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program, funded through the Health Resources and Services Administration and led by James (Jim) S. Powers, MD, our division recently established new partnerships across Middle Tennessee to teach dementia care and safe medication practices for older adults.