Descriptive survey determines education supervisors' and field physicians' needs in geriatric emergency medicine education, indicating significant gaps.
Purpose: To determine the awareness and needs of emergency medicine clinic education supervisors and field physicians regarding geriatric emergency medicine education and emergency department design in Türkiye.Materials and methods: A total of 159 physicians, consisting of 19 education supervisors and 140 emergency medicine field physicians from across Türkiye, participated in this descriptive and cross-sectional online survey study. Data was collected between June 2022 and July 2023.Results: Of the field physicians, 90.0% reported that there were no geriatricians available for consultation in their hospitals. While 68.4% of the education supervisors found the TUKMOS curriculum insufficient regarding geriatric emergency medicine, 86.4% of the field physicians strongly supported the detailed addition of geriatric topics to the core training curriculum. Furthermore, 84.3% of the field physicians stated they needed additional training to recognize atypical presentations, and 81.4% needed it for polypharmacy and treatment management. The idea that geriatric emergency medicine should be a subspecialty was supported by 71.4% of field physicians and 57.9% of education supervisors.Conclusion: Although emergency medicine physicians and education supervisors in Türkiye have a high level of awareness regarding geriatric emergency medicine management, they experience deficiencies in theoretical training and practical infrastructure. Increasing the weight of geriatric topics in the TUKMOS curriculum, supporting elder-friendly emergency department designs, and considering geriatric emergency medicine as a subspecialty are critically important for health policies.
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Kılıç et al. (2026) studied this question.
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