College of Gerontology Nursing Knowledge and Skills Framework
Welcome to the NZNO College of Gerontology Nursing Knowledge and Skills Framework. This knowledge and skills framework supports nurses who are working with older adults/ kaumātua to plan their careers and continuing professional development.
It was developed and is maintained by the College of Gerontology Nursing, a college of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO).
This framework is for registered nurses who work primarily with older adults/ kaumātua in any setting. It is also for employers and educators providing professional development training for gerontology and non-specialist nurses, and for managers, assessors and workforce development specialists looking to analyse and assess gerontology nurses’ skills.
Supporting nurses to use the framework is the GERIATRIC 5Ms – a simplified communication framework to describe the core competencies in geriatrics in a fashion that should be more comprehensible and more memorable to those outside of the field.

We have permission to use the model as follows:
You have authors' permission to use The Geriatric 5Ms for educational purposes with attribution to the authors and without changes. Include the following copyright statement in all materials: Copyright © 2017 Frank Molnar, Allen Huang, Mary Tinetti. 2017. May be used for educational purposes with full attribution and no alterations.