As medical advancements allow patients to live longer, the ability to provide patient-centered care for aging adults is a critical skill for the physician workforce. Four Yale faculty members recently reported on a new training program regarding geriatric care for Yale medical students during their first week of medical education. The program centers on the 4Ms: What Matters Most, Mobility, Mentation, and Medication, a key framework developed in the last decade to guide history-taking of older adults. It is the first known reported training to incorporate 4Ms history-taking into the first day of medical school coursework and a medical student's first in-person patient interview.
All first-year medical students at Yale School of Medicine begin their education with the Introduction to the Profession (iPro) course. The 4Ms framework was introduced in the “Introduction to the Wards and Patient Conversation” iPro session.
Student feedback on the training included appreciation for guiding open-ended questions to elicit main concerns a patient may have. The findings of this work hold promise for advancements in the care for older adults, with opportunities to adapt and incorporate this curriculum into other medical school introductory courses, as well as opportunities for expansion into medication history training. Among students, this work also lays the foundation for further evaluation of student perceptions of older adult patients and the impact this training may have on initial patient impressions.
The article was co-authored by Barry J. Wu, MD, professor of medicine; Michael Schwartz, PhD, associate dean for curriculum, director of innovation in medical education, MD program; Richard Marottoli, MD, MPH, professor of medicine (geriatrics); and Oluwatosin Adeyemo, MD, MPH, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences.
Wu BJ, Schwartz ML, Marottoli R, Adeyemo O. Medical students applying the 4Ms during their first week of school. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2024; 1-3. doi:10.1111/jgs.18850
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