Medical schools prepare for "silver tsunami"

By Richard C. Lewis

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - Just a few years ago, a graduate from Brown University medical school had just an inkling about how to care for the elderly.

Now, Brown and other U.S. medical schools are plugging geriatric courses into their curricula and adding specially trained faculty members as they respond to an imminent boom in the number of older Americans and the need to better understand how to properly care for the elderly.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects the number of elderly Americans will nearly double to 71 million by 2030, leaving one physician trained in geriatric care for every 7,665 seniors.

The first members of the Baby Boomer generation, so named for the explosion in births in the years after World War Two, turn 65 in three years. In addition, people are living longer than ever.

"The first ripples of the silver tsunami are lapping at the shores of our country, but there is not a coordinated or strategic response taking place in America," said Richard Besdine, who is director of the geriatrics division at Brown University medical school in Providence, Rhode Island, and past president of the American Geriatrics Society.

Geriatrics has never been a field of choice for young doctors. Elderly care doctors are paid less than most other physicians and surgeons and the aged can be hard to treat.

They have complicated medical histories and their ailments, even such routine illnesses as pneumonia, can be more difficult to diagnose because they may be masked by other conditions. Also, drugs can affect them differently than middle-aged adults.

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