"I want to recruit you!"

Regardless of your view about the proper role of geriatrics specialists - direct service providers or researchers/educators - the fact remains that we need more of them. As we succeed in setting higher standards for competence among generalists in caring for older adults in medicine, nursing, and social work, the need for specialists to serve as faculty will only become more acute.

In response, many Hartford Foundation projects are intended to help support those who wish to become future faculty in geriatrics (e.g., the Centers of Excellence in Medicine and Training, the Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, and the Social Work Faculty Scholars Programs). Even with these programs and the benefits we hope they provide, recruiting students is not easy. Geriatric care is not highly paid or prestigious among the powerful. We know that there are subtle (and not so subtle) disincentives to focusing one's career on geriatrics.

To provide some counter force, Hartford grantees have been experimenting with ways to reach health professionals early in their training. A few examples are shown through the links here:

Careers in Geriatric Nursinghttp://www.hhdev.psu.edu/hartford/educators.html

Penn State University's Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence has created a series of outstanding videos intended to show the benefits of a career in geriatric nursing. I think they go a long way towards addressing that central issue in geriatric care - what is special about geriatrics?

The Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative last year tried a different approach. By asking students themselves to capture the meaning of geriatric social work, they tried to harness the wisdom of the audience and use peer-to-peer spokespersons to drive the message.

The John A. Hartford Foundation Centers of Excellence in Medicine and Training have been working on this problem for more than 10 years and with 28 centers, their ideas need a book. It is entitled, Approaches to Recruiting Premedical and Medical Students and Residents to Careers in Geriatric Medicine. It can be found at: http://www.geriatricsrecruitment.org/files/ManualOne.pdf

I bet that there are many, many more ideas among readers.

It would be great if you would post links to your favorite recruitment approaches as comments on the blog.

Thanks.