Director, Stein Gerontological Institute
Miami Jewish Home and Hospital
Dr. Bernard A. Roos, the University of Miami School of Medicine director for geriatrics programs, is professor of medicine and neurology, and director of the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center (GRECC), based at the VA Medical Center. He is the chief academic officer at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital at Douglas Gardens, where he directs the Stein Gerontological Institute (SGI), the State of Floridas Teaching Nursing Home Program, which he founded in 1999.
The Stein Gerontological Institute is the educational and research component of the Miami Jewish Home. Its mission is to innovate and disseminate effective health professions training for nurses, social workers, physicians, and other staff in order to assure competent long-term care. It does this through fostering state-of-the art educational training, facilitating educational research and technology, and collaborating with academic and industry organizations to pursue and document improved clinical practice and outcomes. As the home of Floridas only Teaching Nursing Home program, SGI has developed expertise in electronic learning through the creation of an online geriatrics university known as GeriU.
Dr. Roos explains the function and importance of the Stein Gerontological Institute: “Unlike teaching hospitals and clinics, most of our states nursing homes are without access to the high-level educational and practice expertise found at a nursing or medical school. For this and many other reasons related to compensation and resources, the image of long-term care has not attracted young professionals, and there is only limited access to technology on the job.”
SGIs objectives are to promote forums, conferences and partnerships to identify needs and develop training to foster competency in long-term care (LTC), with special attention and support for LTC geriatrics trainers and clinical educators; to enhance the image of LTC in the community through geriatrics educational innovation, and in academia through educational outcomes research and publication of reports and manuscripts; and to integrate educational technology to improve information sharing, learning reinforcement, and clinical decision support in nursing homes and in community LTC settings.
Dr. Roos pioneered molecular studies of aging and has published more than 175 articles on his research on biochemical and clinical aspects of hormone changes during aging, including age-related changes in mineral and skeletal metabolism and in malignant transformation. In 1993 he was named recipient of one of the first endowed chairs in the country for research in aging, the University of Miami’s Chester Cassel Chair for Research in Gerontology. He serves on the Clinical Practice Committee of the American Geriatrics Society, the executive board of the Florida Geriatrics Society, and he is a member of the scientific council of the Gerontological Research Economic Organization, an international research foundation based in Kreutzlingen, Switzerland.
