UCSF Department Of Medicine | Division of Geriatrics

Louise is Associate Professor in the Division of Geriatrics, Co-Director of the UCSF Medical Humanities Initiative, and does research to improve the way we educate medical students, residents, and health professionals.

Louise studied history and medical anthropology at Brown University and received her MD degree from Harvard. She then moved to UCSF where she completed a residency in Primary Care Internal Medicine, a Clinician-Educator Fellowship and the Geriatrics Fellowship. She later received a Master's in Fine Arts degree in fiction writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

Louise first joined the UCSF faculty in 1997, practicing at the Lakeside Senior Medical Center and serving as the founding director of the Housecalls Program. From 2000-2006, Louise left academics for community practice and to pursue advanced training as a writer. In 2006, she rejoined the Division of Geriatrics as a clinician-educator. She divides her time between between clinical practice, research focused on training physicians and other health professionals in geriatrics and reflective skills for lifelong learning, development of the UCSF Medical Humanities Program, and teaching. Louise is also a recipient of a Geriatric Academic Career Award and a Medical Education Research Fellowship. Her creative writing appears in literary journals and the popular press.

Clinical Activities

Louise practices primarily through the UCSF Housecalls Program which provides primary care and palliative care to frail homebound elders throughout San Francisco. Housecalls has close associations with the hospitals and specialists at the Parnassus and Mt Zion campuses, the Institute on Aging, and UCSF's Home Health Agency. Louise also does geriatrics consultations at San Quentin Prison and will be attending on the Acute Care for the Elderly Unit at San Francisco General Hospital. During her career, Louise has provided primary care or geriatrics consultations to older adults in outpatient, hospice, skilled nursing and hospital settings.

Louise's research has two areas of focus:

1. Reflection- Increasingly reflection is seen as a skill essential for lifelong learning for physicians and other health professionals. Louise has created tools for developing this core skill. She has applied it to areas of professional development including clinical uncertainty, self-assessment, professionalism, and cultural competency. Her current work seeks to find best practices for teaching reflection, methods for evaluating reflective ability, and linking reflection to outcomes for physicians and, ultimately, patients.

2. Geriatrics education- With a rapidly growing population of older adults in the United States and few clinicians trained in their care, how do we increase the geriatrics skills of care providers across all disciplines? Louise's work in this area seeks to develop and evaluate geriatrics training programs with the goal of determining the most effective ways of increasing the geriatrics competence of clincians who have not specifically trained in Geriatrics.

Selected Publications

Aronson L., Landefeld CS. Examining older people for carotid bruits: listen to your patient, not to her neck. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 13(2):140-1, 1998.
Aronson L. Medical Linguistics. Journal of General Internal Medicine 2007 22(12): 1781.
Aronson L. The Ethics of Everyday Life. Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts. 2009 3(2).
Aronson L, Chittenden E, O'Sullivan P. A Faculty Development Workshop in Teaching Reflection, Medical Education, 2009.
Aronson L. Why Geriatrics? Annals of Internal Medicine, 2009.
Aronson L. Osler, Plutarch and the Intimate Observation of Human Behavior. In: LaCombe M (Ed.). Osler's Bedside Library: Great Writers Who Inspired a Great Physician. Philadelphia: ACP Press, 2009. (in press)

Selected Presentations

Aronson L. Uses of Narrative and Literature in Medical Education. American Diabetes Association National Meeting, 2008.
Aronson L, Dolan B, Learman L, O'Sullivan P. Evaluating Reflective Exercises. American Educational Research Association National Meeting, 2008.
Aronson L. Making Your Work Count Twice- Peer Review and Dissemination of Educational Efforts. American Geriatrics Society National Meeting, 2009.
Aronson L, Robertson P, Lindow J, O'Sullivan P. Guidelines for Reflective Writing Produce Higher Quality Reflections. American Association of Medical Colleges National Meeting, 2009.