Exploring the challenges of frailty in medical education

Rebecca Winter, Grace Pearson*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Frailty is common and medical students and doctors across all specialties will look after patients with frailty. The General Medical Council requires UK medical schools to teach and assess on frailty, and national geriatric societies across the globe include frailty in their recommended undergraduate curricula. However, frailty in medical education is challenging; there is uncertainty around what frailty is in medical education, including how and when to teach it; controversies in mapping teaching and assessments to recommended curricula; patients with frailty can be challenging to include in teaching and assessments due to functional, sensory, and/or cognitive impairments; an individual with frailty is likely to present atypically, with less predictable recovery, introducing complexities into clinical reasoning that can be challenging for students; the term frailty is often negatively perceived, used colloquially and avoided in educational interactions. This commentary discusses these challenges around frailty in undergraduate medical education and serves to provoke discussion about why frailty is so challenging to teach and learn about, including recommendations for how frailty education could be improved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)134–138
Number of pages5
JournalJournal of Frailty and Aging
Volume12
Issue number2
Early online date20 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 20 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
GP was awarded a PhD Fellowship funded by The Dunhill Medical Trust (grant number OPCII-EF-2), which is outside the scope of this submitted work. RW has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Research Groups and Themes

  • Ageing and Movement Research Group
  • Bristol Medical Education Research Group

Keywords

  • Frailty
  • Medical Education
  • Undergraduate
  • Curriculum
  • Assessments

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