UNC Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program

The mission of the UNC Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine is to build the clinical knowledge, skills, and acumen needed to care for older adults and to produce the future leaders in geriatric clinical care, medical education, research, and quality improvement.

A letter from the Program Director

Welcome to the UNC Geriatric Medicine Fellowship! We are proud to train fellows with a diverse range of interests, and we are able to personalize their fellowship training to meet their needs. Our faculty are leaders in medical education, geriatric clinical care, quality improvement, and research. And they are committed to mentoring and training our fellows to be future leaders in the field of geriatrics. Our goal is to nurture the professional growth of each of our fellows and to share our love of geriatrics.

UNC Geriatric Fellows train in a variety of clinical sites, including at our new UNC Eastowne Medical Office Building, where we are able to see patients for both primary care and consultative geriatrics visits, in the same location where they receive their other subspecialty medicine care. Our fellows spend time on our inpatient geriatric service at UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Campus, the proud pilot site of the UNC Dementia Friendly Hospital Initiative, which trained all clinical and nonclinical staff in dementia-friendly care and communication to better serve our patient population.

The inpatient geriatric service, led by an attending geriatrician, a geriatric nurse practitioner, and a geriatric pharmacist, cares for patients from ICU level to floor level, and emphasizes personalized, goal-concordant care for patients, with attention to function and cognition during hospitalization. Fellows also care for patients in Parkview Health and Rehabilitation, a community nursing home, as well as at two of our local Continuing Care Retirement Communities, and at the Piedmont Health Services Program for All-Inclusive Care of the Elderly, giving them a comprehensive understanding of the diversity of long-term care experiences for older adults.

Each year our fellows work together on a quality improvement project, mentored by Drs Laura Hanson and John Batsis, two of our leading geriatrics researchers. Currently, the fellowship class of 2022 is completing a project on improving frailty assessments on our patients admitted to our geriatric inpatient service. Through this curriculum, our fellows have been published [link] in the Journal of American Geriatrics and have presented numerous posters at the American Geriatrics Society National Meeting over the years.

We would be excited for you to join our program, and look forward to telling you more about why geriatrics at UNC is so special. Don’t take my word for it—please see the videos below to hear more from our former fellows! We hope to hear from you soon.

Listen To What Past Fellows Say About the UNC Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program

And watch these videos!

• Learn more about our Geriatric Fellowship Program in the Department of Medicine
• Explore Inpatient Geriatrics at UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Campus

Geriatric Medicine News: Fall 2020

Congratulations to Lindsay Wilson, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine, on her selection as Co-director of the Individualization Phase of the School of Medicine curriculum. Currently serving as President of the Academy of Educators, Dr. Wilson has consistently been recognized for excellence in teaching and scholarship and has taught in every phase of the curriculum. She leads the Transitions Course and Acting Internship Selectives and directs the Care of the Older Patient Scholarly Concentration.

The Center for Aging and Health’s HRSA-funded Carolina Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (CGWEP) launched their ECHO training series in October on Diabetes Management. Led by Dr. Marvin McBride, the bi-weekly lunchtime series has seen strong attendance and positive feedback from clinicians at Piedmont Health Service. The CGWEP extends huge thanks to faculty from the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism for participating in this series and helping to ensure ongoing excellence in the quality of case discussion.

Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhD is an invited speaker for the Health Sciences Presidential Symposium at the Gerontological Society of America’s Annual Scientific Meeting. The presidential symposium on “The Past, Present and Future of Health Sciences Research” will showcase junior and senior researchers’ perspective on how their science began, ways their research has built on the past, and views about the continuing trajectory of their scientific work.

Dr. Niznik’s presentation entitled Deprescribing in older adults: Is evidence for continued medication use generalizable beyond age 75? discussed the evolution of deprescribing research as a means to reconcile medication use with goals of care as adults age.

Lindsay Wilson, MD, MPH, Ellen Roberts, PhD, MPH, Joshua Niznik, PharmD, PhD, Marvin McBride, MD, MBA, Maureen Dale, MD, John Gotelli, RN, Cris Henage, PhD, Ellen Schneider, MBA, Casey Kelley, MPH, and Carol Julian will represent the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Gerontological Society Association’s upcoming 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting Online. Research presented includes dementia friendly hospital initiative outcomes, deprescribing opioids and benzodiazepines in adults 65+ to reduce falls risk (with Stefanie Ferreri, PharmD, in the School of Pharmacy); a virtual curriculum to improve medical student comfort with geriatric care and telemedicine; and deprescribing in older adults: is evidence for continued medication use generalizable beyond age 75?

John Gotelli, MSN, NP, in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, co-authored “Managing Insomnia in Older Adults” in September’s Nursing 2020, with Christine Hedges, PhD, NP.

Congratulations to our UNC Geriatrics clinic, a 2020 Carolina Care Excellence Award recipient for patient care. UNC Geriatrics is the only UNC Health primary care clinic to be recognized with this award. Under the medical directorship of the Division of Geriatric Medicine’s Steve Kizer, MD, UNC Geriatrics clinic has been a Carolina Care Excellence Award recipient for the past 5 years. Also, under the medical directorship of the Division of Geriatric Medicine’s Margaret Drickamer, MD, SECU Jim and Betsy Bryan Hospice Home won a Carolina Care “Behavioral Award” for Outpatient Care. Congratulations, UNC Hospice team!

Rosanne Tiller, MD, will speak on “The Geriatric Syndrome of Frailty” at Moses Cone Grand Rounds on October 9.

UNC Center for Aging and Health will be funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to continue as a National Training Center for the MSTAR program: Medical Students Training in Aging Research. Through a $526,825 T-35 grant (“UNC-CH Summer Research Training in Aging for Medical Students – MSTAR” / T35-AG038047) UNC’s MSTAR program has trained 111 medical students in aging research since 2010. Furthermore, this year’s award represents the third round of funding for UNC’s MSTAR program. Division of Geriatric Medicine Chief Jan Busby-Whitehead, MD, is the Principal Investigator and Program Director.

The Center for Aging and Health is a sub-recipient of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Building Our Largest Dementia Infrastructure for North Carolinians (BOLD NC) funding. The Center will partner with the NC Division of Aging and Adult Services (grant PI) and NC Division of Public Health to bring a public health, coordinated, systematic approach to our state’s brain health efforts.

We’re delighted to announce several new Faculty in the Division of Geriatric Medicine.

John A. Batsis, MD, Associate Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gilling School of Public Health, joins us from Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Batsis was a staff physician at the at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Also, he ran an active research program focused on older adults, technology, and functional capacity.

Rosanne Tiller, MD, joins our Faculty after completing residency and a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at UNC. Tiller was Chief Inpatient Resident in 2017-2018.

Junève Toche, MD, joins our Faculty after completing residency and a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at UNC. Toche was Chief Outpatient Resident in 2018-2019.

We could not be more fortunate to have these outstanding Geriatrician-Clinician-Educator-Researchers on board!

Laura Hanson, MD, MPH, Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Medical Director of Palliative Care, has been awarded $4.1 million in funding to administer a new multicenter trial from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Also, this award funds the first major clinical trial of comprehensive dementia-specific palliative care.

The ADRD Palliative Care (ADRD-PC) trial will enroll hospitalized patients with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) and their family caregivers. Then, it will follow them after discharge to improve supportive care in the community. Trial sites include the University of North Carolina, University of Colorado, Indiana University and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Please see more Faculty news here.