BRIDGE Initiatives and Interprofessional Curriculum

The BRIDGE-IT is composed of interdisciplinary, permanent faculty, including Geriatric Medicine, Geriatric Psychiatry, Nursing, a Care Manager, Program Administrator, and Program Evaluator. The BRIDGE-IT permanent faculty functions as the foundation for patient care and educational programs, both exemplifying the core qualities of interprofessional collaborative, patient-centered practice in geriatrics and delivering interprofessional educational modules to trainees rotating on the BRIDGE-IT. The BRIDGE-IT permanent members help to deliver our innovative educational initiatives for PCPs, patients, families, and caregivers in both primary care and community settings. Interprofessional trainees are involved in all BRIDGE-IT activities, including: medical students, nursing / NP students, OT / PT / PA students, public health students, residents, and geriatric medicine / psychiatry fellows / PH students.

Interprofessional healthcare trainees participate in both a “live”, collaborative curriculum for geriatrics and also self-learning modules focused on the geriatrics core competencies (AGS 2011). Trainees are active participants in all other educational programming, including: community outreach (Project SCENE), BRIDGE ECHO, and BRIDGE GAP.

• Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment
• Wellness and Functional Ability
• Interprofessional Teams and Interprofessional Care of the Older Adult
• Age-Friendly Health – the 4Ms
• Dementia-Friendly Communities
• Geriatric Syndromes
• Culturally and Linguistically Competent Healthcare of Older Adults 
• Ageism

BRIDGE-GAP utilizes the integrated care model to insert BRIDGE-IT members and trainees directly into the clinical sites of our partners. BRIDGE-IT engages in consultative geriatric, geriatric mental health and ADRD care of older adults directly in primary care clinics while providing supervision and education to trainees and primary care providers. NP Trainees, supervised by the BRIDGE NP serve as care coordinators for all patients seen by BRIDGE-IT, traveling with patients throughout their ambulatory care appointments, transitions of care, and liaising with all providers and service agents involved in their care and collecting data on program outcome measures. BRIDGE-IT works with the primary care sites to measure program outcomes and conduct PDSA initiatives surrounding program activities and outcomes. This model allows the primary care sites to build the necessary geriatric, geriatric mental health, and ADRD experience, to sustain improvements after the funding cycle is complete, effectively “bridging the geriatric care gap”.

The School of Public Health at SDMC designed a new program, the Advanced Certificate in Public Health Geriatrics. This program is comprised of five courses: Principles of Epidemiology, Principles of Biostatistics, Epidemiology of Aging, Policy Issues in Geriatrics, and Program Planning and Evaluation. Through this program we hope to advance geriatrics at the public health level throughout Brooklyn.

The College of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Related Professions have targeted areas for enhancement with geriatric medicine. These enhancements are specific to each school. The College of Medicine and College of Nursing enhance their programming through participation in BRIDGE.

The ECHO model breaks down the walls between specialty and primary care. It links expert specialist teams at an academic center with primary care clinicians in the community. Together, they participate in  “teleECHO” clinics, which are like virtual grand rounds, combined with mentoring and patient case presentations. We has created a Project ECHO model to disseminate geriatric, geriatric mental health, and ADRD education across BRIDGE partner satellite sites. BRIDGE ECHO allows extension of educational programming to the full breadth of available providers..

Project SCENE (Senior Citizen Educational Needs Endeavor) is the outreach component of the BRIDGE multi-disciplinary team to deliver culturally and linguistically educational programs, and services to individuals 65 years or older, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The mission of Project SCENE is to empower elders to make informed health decisions, to prevent disease, disability and injury among the elderly, and to promote healthy behaviors for the aging population. Project SCENE utilizes the satellite outreach model to deliver services by a team that will go to partner and affiliates’ locations.