Geriatric Workforce Enhancement program provides professionals with necessary tools

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The Northwest Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Center (GWEC) at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Department of Geriatrics works to give clinicians and professionals knowledge they can use to optimize better outcomes for seniors and their families.

The center works in collaboration with the Area Agency on Aging & Disabilities of Southwest Washington (AAADSW).

Breanne Swanson, the primary care liaison and community services supervisor for the area agency on aging and disabilities, highlights the urgent need for the program.

“The GWEC program exists all over the country and they’re designed to improve health outcomes for older adults,” said Swanson. “They do that by developing a health care workforce that maximizes patient and family engagement and help combine geriatrics into primary care.”

She said GWEC has a number of different programs. The center provides training for medical residences and provides monthly staffing sessions. 

“It’s really geared for physicians and health care teams because we’re trying to build awareness of services and supports that help older adults remain in their homes, and also helping build that geriatric skill focus for primary care providers,” Swanson said.

Swanson serves as a liaison that links the AAADSW to health care providers, “as there’s not a lot of cross-talk between those two groups.” If health care providers do not speak with community-based organizations like the area agency on aging, Swanson said patients could miss out on resources that are available. According to Swanson, around 30% of seniors go directly to their physicians as they seek resources to stay at home. 

“When people go to (their doctor) with those questions, they may not always be directed to a social work team within the clinic or in the right direction so that’s where we come in,” she said.

Another feature of the GWEC enables providers like doctors, social workers, and pharmacists to continue education opportunities through their geriatric health care lecture series. At the end of March, there will be a lecture on dementia, which Swanson said will help educate professionals on matters like understanding the difference between dementia, depression and delirium, prescribing medication, maximizing quality of life, and how to treat certain behavioral symptoms. 



“Those are all really important topics for primary care providers to understand,” Swanson said.

Swanson said the AAADSW also provides a connection to dementia resources, with some of the most popular being their dementia roadmap and dementia legal planning toolkit, which were developed by the Washington State Dementia Action Collaborative. 

“These are really great family education tools and the roadmap is one of my favorite resources that we hand out. That really is a guide for care partners who are living with or caring for somebody with a recent diagnosis, or maybe even in the middle of the process, where they just need more information about what the disease process looks like, what symptoms they might be seeing, or what they could do to plan the road ahead,” she said. 

The resources are also given to health care professionals through the GWEC to further enhance their knowledge when helping patients with a dementia diagnosis.

More information on the Northwest Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Center can be found online at nwgwec.org, while more information on the Area Agency on Aging & Disabilities of Southwest Washington is available at helpingelders.org.