Dr. Josea Kramer with the VA Greater Los Angeles Health System and UCLA school of medicine is lead author on a study that reports evaluation findings from the Rural Inter-disciplinary Team Training (RITT) provided to Indian Health Service (IHS) and tribal health programs. The RITT training is offered to IHS and tribal providers as part of an educational collaboration to support health care staff training.
Results show statistically significant improvements in all health care staff’s
- self-reported ability to recognize potential risks to elders’ health and safety,
- increased comfort conducting geriatric assessments, and
- improved confidence in team-based communications.
Qualitative findings indicate health care providers intention to improve team-based care practices. Training participants included in the study included physicians (10), nurses (22), pharmacists (9), rehab therapists (3), social workers (3), and dieticians (4).
The article outlines multiple revisions made to the traditional VA-RITT training to make is more user-friendly and appropriate for IHS and tribal health staff. For example, revised IHS-RITT training includes a learning objective to help health care staff learn how to identify geriatric “red flags,” the number of case studies was reduced, and theory driven content was replaced with practice-based content. IHS-RITT content on dementia was changed to include videos specific to the population and incorporate discussions of syndrome and cognitive disorder recognition in the context of local tribal cultures.
Click to read the full study (requires paid Access) [ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02701960.2022.2056735]
B. Josea Kramer, Nancy T. Weintraub & Regina A. Richter-Lagha (2022) Infusing geriatrics in Indian Health Service general primary care clinics: extending VA workforce development training, Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, DOI: 10.1080/02701960.2022.2056735
