Message from the Director
Thank you for your interest in the Geriatric Fellowship Program of the University of Pennsylvania.
Geriatrics is ultimately about compassion. It is about learning to see suffering and moving towards it. Regardless of where a patient is at (physically or emotionally), the goal is to meet them there. Training in geriatrics is therefore training in compassion.
I listened to an interview with Canadian physician and author Gabor Maté who described compassion in 5 layers:
- Ordinary compassion - Seeing suffering and allowing my heart to be moved to desire the alleviation of that suffering.
- Compassion of understanding - Wanting to understand the why of someone’s suffering. Exploring someone else’s story on their terms with curiosity, without assumptions or judgment.
- Compassion of connection - Relating to the suffering as part of our shared humanity. I can connect to your suffering and not view you and your experience as fundamentally different from mine.
- Compassion of truth - I will not protect you from painful truth but will hold it with you because I believe it will set you free.
- Compassion of hope - I will see you for the beautiful human being you are even if you cannot see it for yourself.
The clinical year is focused on learning about taking care of individual patients and the systems of care that affect them. Whether it is healthy aging, multimorbidity, dementia, or end of life care, fellows will train in managing complex older adults with skillful simplicity to help them live the best lives they can. Fellows will train with a large faculty in the care of the older adult in the
hospital, office, post-acute, long-term care and home-based settings.
The goal of this academic fellowship program is to produce geriatricians who will scale compassion for the older adult at a systems level through health system leadership, innovative research and education. For those interested in further training to prepare for an academic career, there are opportunities to have second and third years focused on education, quality improvement and health leadership, research and areas of clinical focus. Many of these opportunities include getting a certificate or master's degree.
In order to care for the incredibly diverse population of older adults who each have their own individual story, this requires us to have as diverse a population of physicians who can deeply connect to each story. Diversity for our fellowship is therefore not just something that is nice to have, but it is essential to fulfill our mission. Please consider applying for our fellowship program. I would love to welcome you into the community of geriatricians.
Joshua Uy, MD