title: Geriatric education. Part II: The effect of a well elderly program on medical student attitudes toward geriatric patients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess impact of exposure to healthy elderly on medical students' attitudes toward the elderly.
  
  
  METHODS
  Prospective, randomized, controlled intervention trial.
  
  
  METHODS
  Community-based Well Elderly Program.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ninety-three fourth year medical students on a required Geriatric Medicine clerkship who were assigned to either a tertiary care university medical center or a teaching nursing home.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thirty-five students were randomly assigned to participate in a Well Elderly Program and were compared to a control group of 58 students at equivalent sites who did not participate.
  
  
  METHODS
  Pre- and post-rotation, students were given the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD), a validated geriatric attitudinal scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  By repeated measures analysis of variance, the difference between pre- and post-rotation ASD scores were most significant for students who participated in the Well Elderly Program; site did not exert a significant interaction effect.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results underscore the importance of exposure to healthy older people on effecting positive attitude changes among medical students on geriatrics rotations.
authors.affiliation: Division of Geriatrics, Winthrop-University Hospital, Mineola, NY 11501.
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Adelman
authors.forename: S D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Fields
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jutagir
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D003479:Curriculum; D005260:Female; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000193:education*; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009735:Nursing Homes; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*