Student attitudes and knowledge about aging patients: A one year cohort report

Through the Iowa Geriatric Education Center, a course in Healthy Aging is offered to chiropractic students. This course is assessed each term related to the effectiveness of this educational model in enhancing student knowledge and attitudes towards caring for aging patients. While successes related to this course were reported by Hawk, et. al, from pilot tests of the ‘model course', this project will assess the demographic make up and results of pre and post tests of 3 classes of students (a total of 350 students) in the academic year 2007-08. The tools used in this assessment were the Palmore Facts on Aging (PFOA) Quiz and Aging Semantics Differential. Interestingly the Pre- assessments on aging knowledge indicated that our chiropractic students had slightly better knowledge scores on the PFOA than the normative data for medical students in geriatrics. In this cohort, students' scores on the knowledge test (Palmore) improved significantly after the 30 hour course, by an average of 4 points out of a 25 point assessment. The pre scores assessing attitudes were also more positive than most health professionals studied. Subsequent to the course, attitudes were modestly enhanced. Details of these findings will be described in this session. The case-based, evidence-based, and community-based methods utilized in this course, appear to be providing a positive environment for improving students knowledge and attitudes towards geriatric care. It is hoped that chiropractors may play a role in providing for the healthcare needs of our aging world.