Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 2006
It is generally accepted that the study of human aging and the health-care needs of older people should form part of the undergraduate medical curriculum. This view was supported by policy documents from the World Health Organization, the Royal College of Physicians of London and the General Medical Council. Surveys in the 1980s showed that geriatric medicine was being taught in almost all medical schools, most commonly by a compulsory attachment to a hospital-based department of geriatric medicine.