FEATURE

Rukshana Cader MD, Third-Year Medicine Resident, Appointed Chair of the American Geriatrics Society Resident Special Interest Group

Goals Focus on Increasing Resident Exposure to Geriatrics, Including Establishment of New AGS Chapters

Rukshana Cader, MD (4th from left) with fellow residents at the 2007 AGS Scientific Meeting

Dr. Rukshana Cader is the AGS Residents Special Interest Group's second chair. Having been a member of Baystate’s geriatric medicine track since she was an intern, Dr. Cader has taken full advantage of AGS’ efforts to involve more residents in its organization.

She is currently the vice-president of its resident chapter, and was actively involved at the 2007 AGS scientific meeting in Seattle, presenting  her poster, ”Class III CHF presenting as a geriatric syndrome”, and participating in the residents mentoring program pilot that linked residents with mentors who could help them with an aspect of their career. 

At Baystate, Dr. Cader’s exposure to the natural aging process in the healthy geriatric population through her involvement in the AGS trainee chapter’s resident-powered community outreach programs has spurred her desire to promote this type of community-based programming to other interested residency programs.

Accordingly, Dr. Cader has developed some ambitious goals for the next AGS meeting in May 2008:

• To facilitate networking and academic guidance between residents and program directors and other leaders in geriatrics in attendance at the meeting, she supports an expansion of the resident mentoring project that was piloted at last year’s meeting.

• She will strive to reserve as many places as possible for trainees in the meeting’s “Skills Station” workshop to maximize the number of residents who will be able to practice or learn new clinical techniques relevant to the assessment of older patients.

• To familiarize residents with various professional options for geriatricians, she will work to devote part of the session to reviewing career paths such as, geriatric hospitalist, nursing home physician/medical director, academic geriatrician and consultant.

• For those interested in pursuing a geriatric fellowship, she will also assist in arranging a “fellowship fair.”

Dr. Cader welcomes your feedback and ideas. Phone her at 413-794-2511 or email her at rukshana.cader@bhs.org.