“A lot of us are sick of the whining,” said Dr. Rosanne M. Leipzig, a geriatrician and professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is experimenting with a two-year program that combines geriatrics and palliative care.

And there is an emerging emphasis on training many different health care professionals — nurses, pharmacists, internal and family medicine physicians, physician assistants, and physical and occupational therapists — to see older patients through a geriatrics lens rather than focusing solely on creating more geriatricians. Mini-fellowships at teaching hospitals to train practicing physicians in geriatrics have sprung up around the country. Cardiology, urology, emergency medicine and other specialties are promoting geriatrics training and research within those disciplines.

Acknowledging an older person’s need for dignity is an important part of Dr. Eckstrom’s practice. When talking with a patient about giving up driving, she refers to it as “retiring from driving,” casting it as an act of liberation, as if driving were a job to be freed of.

It is that kind of perspective that drew the attention of trainees already attracted to the human side of medicine. Dr. Kathleen Drago grew to love geriatrics while training under Dr. Eckstrom. “I got caught in Elizabeth’s web,” she said. “You meet people who have walked these incredible paths, and are starting to reflect on their lives and focus in on what’s important in the time they have left.”

Dr. Drago, 31, left medical school with a debt of around $270,000. “I made a decision that was distinctly against my own financial interests,” she said. “But I come to work every day, and I get to deliver the patient-centered care that I dreamed of as a med student.”

She now works as a geriatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, seeing only hospitalized patients. Recent evidence about care provided by geriatrics teams shows that with the care of such teams, the hospitalization of older adults runs shorter, costs less and results in fewer complications, including falls, pressure ulcers and urinary tract infections.

While making her rounds in the hospital one recent afternoon, Dr. Drago introduced herself to a 79-year-old woman in the intensive care unit. The patient, who has dementia, had been found lying on the ground the previous night a quarter-mile from her home, bruised and bloodied, with three cracked ribs and bleeding in her brain. She had left the house with a Bible in one hand and an American flag in the other.

Dr. Drago sat down and began a frank yet gentle conversation with the patient and her daughter about the next steps. The doctor stayed for two hours.