(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-29 09:44

Out of 800,000 doctors in the United States, roughly 7,000 are geriatricians, Hougham said. The country needs another 13,000 to adequately care for today's older population, according to the American Geriatrics Society. The shortfall could reach 36,000 by 2030.

To help counter that, private groups are bankrolling medical schools' emphasis on aging.

The Hartford Foundation has given more than $40 million to 27 schools to train faculty in elderly care, and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation has given more than $100 million to 30 schools to include more geriatrics content and establish geriatric departments at two colleges, said Steve Anderson, the foundation's president.

Since arriving at Brown in 2000, Besdine has increased the geriatrics faculty to a dozen from two and is weaving aging content into every course at the medical school.

The University of Oklahoma College of Medicine requires all third-year medical students to complete a rotation in geriatrics, said Marie Bernard, a geriatrician and chair of the school's Reynolds Department of Geriatric Medicine.

The University of California at Los Angeles has integrated geriatrics training into all four years of its medical program, said David Reuben, chief of geriatrics at the school.

"If they don't learn it, they still have to deal with it," Reuben said. "It's not that not learning geriatrics will cause these older people to go away. They're coming whether we're ready or not."

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