Education and Responsibilities

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The core of the fellowship curriculum is based on longitudinal clinical experiences that last the year. Each fellow has a continuity clinic at the VA. Dr. Brendan Smith and other clinical faculty supervise this clinic. This clinic provides both primary and geriatrics care for older adults. In addition, fellows have a unique experience of providing clinical care at a University clinic based out of a senior community. Fellows follow a panel of patients at the VA Community Living Center where the focus is on interdisciplinary team care planning of complex chronic disease patients that includes long-term care, skilled nursing, sub acute, and hospice appropriate admissions. The fellow also participates in administrative meetings. Dr. Diane Chau, the Fellowship Director, supervises this experience along with other clinical faculty.

There are six-months of the VA CLC rotations for fellows. This includes administrative, clinical care, quality improvement, team care planning, and house staff teaching duties. Fellows work with residents from internal medicine, family medicine, psychiatry, and surgery.

Fellows do not take call after hours or weekends.

Didactic sessions are also provided by and for fellows through the following: Live presentations, video teleconferencing (VTel), audio teleconferencing, webcasts, DVD. To enrich and enhance collegiality among small fellowship programs, we offer the fellows increased exposure to other geriatric medicine fellows through a shared weekly core lecture and journal club with Stanford University’s GRECC and their fellows. Some lectures occur in Reno and some occur in Palo Alto but broadcast live through VTel. The VA is a rich source of nationally acclaimed speakers that offer monthly research conferences through our live audio teleconferencing systems. We also share with the University of Utah’s monthly grand rounds live webcasts as well as hosting our own monthly CME visiting professor series. Through the Nevada Geriatric Education Center, fellows work to build their presentation skills with Patti Swager (the NGEC’s Director) and Dr. Diane Chau by teaching geriatric topics to an audience of other physicians and healthcare providers. Didactics are designed to meet different learning styles from those who are self directed to those needing more scheduled lectures.

The fellowship program offers frequent close mentoring and collaborative opportunities for academic growth with Geriatrics faculty.

2009-2010 Geriatric Division lectures

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