The rural interdisciplinary team training program: a workforce development workshop to increase geriatrics knowledge and skills for rural providers

ABSTRACT

The Rural Interdisciplinary Team Training Program (RITT) is a team-based educational component of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Office of Rural Health Geriatric Scholars Program. It is a workforce development program to enhance the geriatrics knowledge and skills of VA primary care clinicians and staff caring for older veterans in rural communities. The RITT workshop, accredited for 6.5 hours, is interactive and multi-modal with didactic mini-lectures, interactive case discussions and role play demonstrations of assessments. Clinic teams also develop and implement a small quality improvement project based on common challenges faced by older persons. This report is an evaluation of the effect of the RITT Program on geriatrics knowledge and team development as well as success in developing and implementing the quality improvement projects in 80 VHA rural outpatient clinics in 38 states.

KEYWORDS:

• Teamwork
• rural
• interdisciplinary education
• continuing medical education
• geriatric education/training

Disclosure statement

The opinions and perspectives in this article are those of the authors and do not constitute official policy of the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported through funding from the Veterans Health Administration Office of Rural Health and the Geriatric Scholars Program.