Michael Lewis, M.D., associate professor of clinical anesthesiology and associate program director in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine, and Pain Management at the Miller School of Medicine, notes geriatric patients have “different physiology, they respond differently to stress, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.”

The elderly (defined as those over 65 years old) are the fastest growing demographic in the United States and comprise 18 percent of the population in Florida. As people age, they are more likely to require surgery. They are also more likely to suffer perioperative complications.

But current anesthesiology programs emphasize pediatric and obstetric anesthesiology, not geriatric anesthesia. Living in South Florida, a haven for golden agers, Lewis felt there was clearly a need to research and create standards for geriatric perioperative care—and he received a Fulbright scholarship to fulfill these goals. The Fulbright Scholar Program sends 800 United States faculty and professionals abroad each year to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields.

From February through August last year, Lewis lived in Israel as a Fulbright Scholar and studied how to develop and implement an educational program designed to enhance geriatric anesthesiology education. Lewis’s partner in the project was Idit Matot, M.D., of the Hadassah Hospital, Hebrew University, who also sponsored his Fulbright application. Based on an established course developed at the University of Miami, the project aimed to export the content to Israel and develop it into a Web-based educational program. Lewis and Matot’s model, which includes an asynchronous chat room with case studies and article links, will soon be incorporated into the residency program at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Lewis intends for the collaboration to serve as a model for future e-learning initiatives and to form the basis of a new curriculum that addresses the anesthesia care of the elderly.

Advancing geriatric perioperative care has long been a priority for Lewis. A faculty member since 1996, Lewis had been trying to pursue this research project for some time but had trouble setting aside the time for research in his busy day-to-day medical practice. His department chairman, David Lubarsky, M.D., M.B.A., helped him fulfill his dream.

“Academic research is a critical part of the intellectual health of our department,” Lubarsky says. “Academics is for the inquiring mind, and that feature is the one that makes working in an academic medical center, in my opinion, so much more exciting than working in a clinical private practice. By supporting experienced academicians to go abroad and have an extended time with academicians in different cultures, we expand not only that scholar’s horizons but also our own when new information and new techniques are brought back into our home institution. As a Fulbright Scholar, we are all impressed with the work that Dr. Lewis did in Israel. He is an example of how much we all benefit when we take the time and resources and invest that in deserving UM faculty.”