Training in geropsychiatry: problems and process.

The introduction of substantive geropsychiatry training into the medical school curriculum and residency programs in medicine and family practice involves overcoming such obstacles as competition among specialties for curriculum time, "ageism" (negative attitudes toward the elderly), limited financial resources, and scarcity of specialized educators and model curricula. These obstacles can be overcome by developing educational alliances with chairpersons and training directors, recruiting charismatic teachers, providing varied clinical experiences with healthy and impaired elderly patients, and by providing formative as well as summative methods of trainee and program evaluation.