An aged care ‘Crash Course’ designed and delivered by a multidisciplinary team improves medical student self-assessed clinical competence and addresses self-identified gaps: a pilot study

As people live longer, most doctors will encounter increasing numbers of older patients. COVID-19 disrupted teaching across the globe. Our aim was to assess whether an Aged Care "Crash Course" is associated with improvements in self-assessed knowledge/ability and addresses gaps for medical students whose clinical experiences were disrupted by COVID-19. A 5-hour multidisciplinary aged care teaching session was designed for and delivered to mid-degree medical students. Lectorials and a workshop comprising "rotation stations" focussed on key topics in aged care. A voluntary, anonymous hard-copy survey was offered before/after the workshop. Amongst 24 attendees, 17 completed the "before" survey, 18 (75%) the "after" (76% female, mean age = 21.5 years). Common self-identified gaps pre-intervention included: physical examination skills, communicating with older patients/carers, delirium/dementia diagnosis/management, and managing medications. Median Likert scores (1-5) for self-assessed competence across key aged-care concepts all improved after the workshop (hand examination <i>p</i> = 0.03, all others <i>p</i> ≤ 0.001), with 1 to point increases in all. Asked if the workshop addressed gaps ("after"), 15/15 responding reported "yes." Key take-home messages commonly referenced the "5 Ps of delirium etiology," gait assessment and medication rationalisation/side-effects. Asked "what worked well," "rotation stations" and teaching quality commonly featured. This model could be replicated in other settings.