Resource Center

In today’s fast-paced healthcare environment, crowded with competing priorities, the human connection is too easily overlooked leaving caregivers burned out and patients and families fearful and suffering.

Through innovative programs, education and advocacy, the Schwartz Center is working to support caregivers, healthcare leaders and others and bring compassion to every healthcare experience.

For care to be effective it must respond well to a patient’s situation. To do so, care must be bio-medically correct with a sound argument backing its implementation. In addition, it should be consistent with the patient’s personal values, desires, and goals. Lastly, care should be feasible given the resources that can be mobilized and the opportunity costs of doing so (what will have to be shifted, postponed or canceled to make room for the new tasks). Not all care recommended as safe and effective for patients like this will fit well in the care of a particular patient.

Ask Me 3® is an educational program that encourages patients and families to ask three specific questions of their providers to better understand their health conditions and what they need to do to stay healthy.

1. What is my main problem?
2. What do I need to do?
3. Why is it important for me to do this?

Designed by health literacy experts, Ask Me 3 is intended to help patients become more active members of their health care team, and provide a critical platform to improve communications between patients, families, and health care professionals.

This toolkit created by the Diverse Elders Coalition (DEC) was created to help professional and voluntary caregivers, providers and a wide array of professionals better understand the unique realities and challenges diverse caregivers face and best practices they can employ to better care for diverse family caregivers, and ultimately, the older adults they care for.

This toolkit contains interprofessional resources for teaching undergraduate and graduate students how to conduct a geriatric assessment. The toolkit contains two components: a digital interactive learner module that introduces the topic to students and a compendium of teaching resources. Faculty can select the aresources that work best for their class. Many of the resources are also available in the learner module. Most of the teaching and learning activities can be adapted for use in online and face-to-face classes.

This toolkit contains interprofessional resources for teaching undergraduate and graduate students how to assess, treat, and educate older adults about urinary incontinence. The toolkit contains two components: a digital interactive learner module that introduces the topic to students along with a compendium of teaching and learning activities and resources. Faculty can select the activities that work best for their class. Most of the teaching and learning activities can be adapted for use in online and face-to-face classes.

This decision-making toolkit released by Planetree International and the American Nurses Foundation was developed to help healthcare leaders implement hospital and nursing home visitation policies that balance safety and infection control with the importance of in-person family presence. The decision-making toolkit guides nurse leaders and other users through a process of considering a range of variables when establishing visiting parameters. These include local conditions, resource availability, equity, and current evidence about potential harms and benefits of family presence.

The National Council on Aging created an Age Well Planner for older adults and family members to complete regarding the health and well being of aging adults. The planner includes a personalized assessment for individuals to complete depending on their role. At the completion of the assessment, individualized resources are provided to the individual based on three categories: finance, Medicare, health and wellness.

Transforming cardiovascular health and improving heart health is a mission of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). This online resource provides evidence-based practice information and slide decks regarding a variety of topics related to geriatric cardiology. In addition, the ACC has a free online case-based curriculum covering key features of aging impacting cardiovascular disease including pharmacology, physiology, hypertension, heart failure, syncope, valvular disease, peripheral arterial disease, perioperative care, palliative care, decision-making.

The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) is a comprehensive, evidence-based, patient care program that provides optimal care for older persons in the hospital. Dr. Sharon Inouye and her colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine originally designed HELP to prevent delirium among hospitalized older persons. This site requires establishing an account to access the free materials.