A study from The World Health Organisation’s Aging and Life Course programme. In light of world-wide population ageing, it has become clear that the education of tomorrow’s medical doctors is important because they will increasingly deal with older patients. Thus, the basic principles of the special care-needs of older persons should not be of exclusive concern to specialists.
In an attempt to asses how geriatric medicine is being taught world-wide, the WHO Ageing and Life Course Programme (ALC) devised a study, the Teaching Geriatric in Medical Education study (TeGeME), and invited the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) to be a close collaborator in the implementation. The study was initiated in December 1999 and has involved many IFMSA members as well as regional associations of medical students, especially the European Medical Students’ Association (EMSA) and the Federation of Scientific Societies of Medical Students in Latin America (Federacion Latinoamericana de Sociedades Científicas de Estudiantes de Medicina – FELSOCEM).
The first step of the study looks at assessing medical school treatment of education in geriatrics and a related report has been produced.
The second step involves assessing the attutudes of medical students in Africa towards older persons. TeGeME project team has selected five Sub-Saharan African countries to participate in this study: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan and Tanzania. Data analysis is currently underway.