Course Overview

Most health professional graduates enter further training or practice without the benefit of any background in finance, business, or leadership. In today’s complex healthcare systems world, however, these graduates become painfully aware of this lack in their education and training. American Geriatrics Society, the Hartford Foundation, and the Association of Directors of Academic Programs, among others, have identified this gap as a serious problem, affecting the success and viability of the continuum of long term care services.

The UCLA Academic Geriatric Resource Center created the Leadership and Management in Geriatrics (LMG) in 2002 to address this gap in the professional development of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and allied health professionals who work in clinical and academic settings related to geriatric care.   LMG affords participants the opportunity to spend time in an intensive and highly interactive setting with leaders in the field of geriatric medical management. Participants are encouraged to think “outside of the box” and consider novel approaches to creating and managing geriatric clinics, practices, and services.

A unique feature of the conference is the opportunity for participants to work in small collaborative groups with a faculty mentor to develop and implement an action plan for a worksite-specific quality improvement management/leadership challenge.

Participants receive detailed instructions for a pre-course assignment in which they identify the worksite-specific management/leadership issue they wish to address. This assignment is the opening exercise of the conference and is an integral element of the conference process. Participants also have the opportunity to be coached during the course and to work with a mentor post-conference to implement their action plans.

Course Objectives

At the end of the course, participants should be able to:

• Identify unique characteristics of geriatric health care services
• Describe and apply key elements of business/organizational theory to medical practice
• Describe and apply geriatric leadership and management skills to medical practice
• Describe at least three models for geriatric practice
• Identify and apply collaborative problem solving skills
• Identify and apply mentor/mentee skills
• Create and implement an action plan to address a worksite management/leadership issue.