As a registered nurse in the emergency department at St. Agnes Hospital, Debra Levine sees plenty of patients 55 and older, but her skills limit how involved she can be in diagnosing, prescribing and developing treatment plans for them.

This fall, Levine will work to fill in those gaps and become one answer to the growing need for gerontological nurses.

“For me, it’s a dream come true,” Levine, 25, said of a new combined adult and gerontological nurse master’s program at the University of Maryland School of Nursing.

“I am really interested in the aging population,” she said.

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By 2050, the 65-and-older population is expected to grow to about 87 million, 2 1/2 times the number in 2000, according to U.S. Census data.

Add to the aging population the shortage of nurses, and demand is growing for programs like the one starting this fall at the University of Maryland.

“We are short of anybody who has specific knowledge of the care of older adults because of the increasing number of older adults,” said Barbara Resnick, a professor at the School of Nursing and co-director of the Adult and Gerontological Nurse Practitioner Program.

Adult nurse practitioners aren’t trained in the complex treatment of seniors, and gerontological nurses focus only on adults 55 and older. The combined program, developed in response to a recommendation by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, will allow graduates to care for anyone 16 and older, school officials said.

About 40 students are enrolled in the program this fall, and Resnick said she hoped to expand the gerontological component to other areas of practice, such as acute care and family care.

Older adults show symptoms in different ways and tend to be more vague in explaining their ailments, Resnick said. For example, a patient may have acute appendicitis but may just complain of being constipated, she said.

“You have to learn to pick up on these vague symptoms and know what follow-up symptoms to look for for a diagnosis,” she said.

Older patients also require more complicated drug management, because they often have to take smaller doses or multiple prescriptions, Resnick said.

“It’s much more complex, and it’s also different.”

smichael@baltimoreexaminer.com