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Abstract
Irrespective of the fact that older persons simultaneously confront medically as well as socially problematic situations, current university and medical school gerontology programs continue to maintain a separatist view toward the provision of geriatric and social gerontologic professional training. Very little effort has been put forth to address the gulf that exists between the narrowly focused gerontologic instruction underway in the social sciences and the limited, as well as narrowly focused, geriatric training presently offered in U.S. medical schools.
This dissertation proposes: (1) that there are certan obvious and noteworthy respects in which the existing approaches to gerontological instruction are inadequate to address the problems of the elderly; (2) that some regulative concepts, criteria and a methodology are needed to evaluate and give direction to the development of more adequate gerontological training programs; and (3) that flexible, experimentally instituted certification procedures be established as means of gathering data concerning the outcomes of training programs that will be useful for testing, correcting, and refining the criteria.
This dissertation is not arguing for any one form or another of the existing approaches, or for any particular alternative to the existing approaches to gerontological training. Rather, it is arguing for a strategy for designing more adequate gerontological training programs. Only then can data be systematically gathered which will permit exacting and detailed comparisons of both existing and new programmatic approaches. The data will also assist in determining whether any of the existing approaches offers advantages that might be selectively incorporated into new and more adequate gerontological training programs.
