Geriatrics and Gerontology in Medical Education*

Despite exhortations in the geriatric literature, medical faculties have not included geriatric medicine in curricula to any significant extent. The establishment of professorships in geriatrics in a few medical schools may have had some local effect but has not spread widely. Rather than continue the exhortations, the explanation for this recalcitrance should be sought and new approaches tried. Recently the trend in medical teaching has been away from didactic lectures and towards student self‐teaching, with earlier specialization including family medicine. Should Geriatrics be identified at an early stage of students' training with a view to producing a small number of geriatric specialists, or should the principles, attitudes and relevant information about the aging process, preventive and preservative measures and management be identified and promulgated by many teachers in different ways? The latter approach is being followed at McMaster Health Science Division and the teaching program is being developed in cooperation with other members of the faculty. This is appropriate to that system which emphasizes self‐teaching, problem solving and small‐group learning without lectures and without formal examinations, but could perhaps be adapted to any system and be better accepted in current teaching philosophy.