Assessing student knowledge about dementia in the chiropractic college setting: Three student cohorts receiving interdisciplinary training

Objective: Persons aged 85+ are the fastest growing subset of the US population. By 2050, the number of Americans with Alzheimer's disease may more than double from 5 million today to a projected 12 million. All health professions, including chiropractors, should receive thorough, up-to-date training related to this devastating disease.

Methods: In this study, three cohorts of chiropractic students completed a pre/post assessment of their perceived knowledge of dementia immediately following a two hour interdisciplinary training module on this topic.  The instruction was an interdisciplinary collaboration between a chiropractor and a medical geropsychiatry specialist from the state’s Geriatric Education Center. 

Results: Cohorts of 100, 75 and 95 students completed pre-and post-assessments to evaluate their knowledge before and after a training module on: 1) Recognizing early signs of mild cognitive impairment 2) Identifying the overlap between depression and dementia, and 3) Understanding the risk factors of dementia and delirium. Additionally, written student feedback was gathered on the perceived value of an interdisciplinary approach. 

Descriptive statistics on the first cohort of students indicate significant improvement in student knowledge on each of 3 topics listed above: 2 points on a 4-point Likert scale, 1.5 and 2 points respectively.

Conclusion: Over 95% of students favorably rated the interdisciplinary collaborative teaching approach. Improvements in the first cohort of 90 students will be compared with the statistics on the combined 3 cohorts and then summarized in this presentation, along with a summary of the student comments on the value of the interdisciplinary approach.