Common Sense Family Doctor

FEBRUARY 1, 2025

Since the turn of the century, the rise of hospitalists and the corresponding decline in the number of office-based family physicians who provide inpatient care for their own patients has magnified the value of optimizing the handoff from hospital-based teams to primary care physicians.

Hospital 52

Hospital Management Primary Care Primary Care Physician 52

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

First, a clinician’s thoughts must be encoded into words, then transmitted often via sounds, and finally decoded back to thoughts by a patient or family member. Patient Values: Three Important Questions-Tell me more? Simple, right? Not so much, as each one of these steps is fraught with miscommunication. What else?

Family 144

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 144

GeriPal

JANUARY 25, 2024

He also found gaps, including very few studies of patients with lung disease, and little impact of trials on quality of life. The article we discuss today, also published in JAMA , addresses these two gaps. Your research is a lot in this patient population, right? AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™. Important implications.

Patient-Centered 122

Patient-Centered Illness IT Patients 122

GeriPal

MAY 22, 2025

Jenny Chen is a palliative care fellow at Yale who regularly sings for her seriously ill patients. Jenny reached out to us because she plays music regularly for her patients, and she said, you should do a podcast about music. And I was looking for articles, and I wasn’t seeing as many as I expected. Come join us.

IT 96

IT Patient-Centered Patients Board-Certified 96

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary You know when you walk out of a patient’s room and have that sense, “This isn’t going to go well.” The patient is sick and getting sicker, and refuses to let you talk with family or other members of her inner circle. Should you stop at “no?” Anne Kelly: Hi there. Nice to be here. Lynn: I do.

Family 97

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 97

GeriPal

DECEMBER 8, 2022

Clinicians “catching” patient life stories. . Our patients aren’t “the 76 year old with heart failure in room 202,” as Heather Coats astutely noted. Our loves, our triumphs, our failures, our work, our families. . Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient. What’s in a story? Bennett, C.R.,

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Does it improve outcomes that patients, caregivers, and clinicians care about? hint: 80% can be done in advance by patients or caregivers) Why is it that some oncologists are resistant to conducting a geriatric assessment, yet have no problem ordering tests that cost thousands of dollars? Alex: How is your family doing?

Patient-Centered 129

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 129

GeriPal

JANUARY 16, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary Many older adults lose decision-making capacity during serious illnesses, and a significant percentage lack family or friends to assist with decisions. And I was asking this patient about if he had filled out an advanced directive. Is the patient in your descriptor? Alex 10:41 No, they don’t.

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Healthcare 109

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

First, we’ve invited Jerry Gurwitz to talk about his recently published article in JAMA titled The Paradoxical Decline of Geriatric Medicine as a Profession (while it’s not the most upbeat title for the future of geriatrics, Jerry sees it as a call to action). I was going to start off by asking Jerry about why he wrote the JAMA article.

Board-Certified 91

Board-Certified IT Community Medical Student 91

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Accreditation In support of improving patient care, UCSF Office of CME is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

IT 137

IT Family Families Physicals 137

GeriPal

OCTOBER 12, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary For surgeons and patients, deciding if and when to operate can be challenging. Often, the way surgeons communicate about these decisions doesn’t make things any easier for themselves or their patients. We hope you enjoy this episode. Alexis, welcome to GeriPal. Alexis: Thanks for having me. Alexis: Yeah.

IT 128

IT Family Families Patient-Centered 128

GeriPal

APRIL 4, 2024

The Cruzan ruling led to a flood of interest in Advance Directives, and eventually to the Patient Self Determination Act, which mandates provision of information about advanced directives to all hospitalized patients. You write about this, you’ve written this New England Journal article, you’ve written past articles.

Family 112

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 112

GeriPal

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Within hours of recording this podcast, I joined a family meeting of an older patient who had multiple medical problems including cancer, and a slow but inexorable decline in function, weight, and cognition. The patient’s capacity to make decisions was marginal, and his sons were shouldering much of the responsibility.

Hospital 132

Hospital Patient-Centered Patients IT 132

GeriPal

JANUARY 18, 2024

We start off the conversation by talking about whether patients with cancer and cancer pain are really that different, and their paper that was just published on January 11 th in JAMA Oncology showing that substance use disorder is not uncommon in individuals with cancer. Eric: Which brings us to an article. Jessie: Exactly.

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening Clinic 136

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

If the purpose of initiating dialysis is improving function – our complex, frail, older patients are likely to be disappointed. Eric 00:13 And, Alex, I am very excited today because there was an awesome article on Annals on conservative management versus dialysis. This is Eric Widera. Alex 00:12 This is Alex Smith.

Management 116

Management Patient-Centered Patients IT 116

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

As she said, when you think about the hardest patients you’ve cared for, in nearly all cases there was some aspect of psychological illness involved. Des delivered a plenary at this year’s National Palliative Care Research Center’s Foley retreat. That rings true to me. All hands go up. All hands go down. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

GeriPal

DECEMBER 15, 2022

In an article in the NEJM (a published article this time, wonder of wonders!) Along the way we address: Is this degree of slowed cognitive decline meaningful to patients or care partners? We’ve talked at length on prior podcasts about the failures of aducnumab, Biogen, and the FDA’s decision to approve it. . Heather: Sure.

IT 105

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Illness 105

GeriPal

MARCH 9, 2023

Early data on efficacy in patients with anxiety and demoralization are promising. Two of our guests today, Stacy Fischer and Brian Anderson, are involved in large multicenter trials of psychedelics for patients with advanced cancer (Fischer) or life-limiting illness (Anderson). Research is exploding. Welcome back to GeriPal, Stacy.

Patient-Centered 91

Patient-Centered Community IT Medical 91

GeriPal

OCTOBER 24, 2024

If you believe the evidence for efficacy to manage symptoms like neuropathic pain, how do you even start to think about recommending these products to patients? And then I met a patient in clinic once who asked me a lot of really intelligent questions about medical cannabis, what it does. Eloise, welcome to the GeriPal podcast.

Medical 98

Medical IT Patient-Centered Healthcare 98

GeriPal

APRIL 14, 2022

And if you want to learn more about buprenorphine from these amazing palliative care clinicians and others, check out of some of these articles: Learn more about caring for those with substance use disorder: . Adapting Palliative Care Skills to Provide Substance Use Disorder Treatment to Patients With Serious Illness . Transcript.

Illness 102

Illness Patient-Centered IT Nurse Practitioner 102

GeriPal

AUGUST 11, 2022

We talk with Susan about how far the field has come, from early days when the attending physician would decide which patients were DNR and place a black “no code” dot in the chart. There was a Stanford article talking about you as a pioneer in this field. There was no conversation with the patient or the family about this.

Illness 109

Illness IT Family Families 109

GeriPal

JULY 28, 2022

This is my early father’s day gift from the family. And I just want to highlight, Jennifer has a great JPSM article that just came out. But at that time I was struck by how in that field, there wasn’t a focus or really interest in symptom management and support for patients and their families.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Accreditation In support of improving patient care, UCSF Office of CME is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

IT 126

IT Patient-Centered Illness Education 126

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

We are going to tackle this question and so many more about coping on this week’s podcast with Dani Chammas , a recurring GeriPal guest, psychiatrist, and palliative care doc at UCSF, and Amanda Moment , a Palliative Care Social Worker at Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center. Coping is something that we see our patients do.

Illness 125

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 125

GeriPal

MAY 15, 2025

Prior podcasts on the ethics of nudging , and a different trial conducted by Kate and Scott in which the default for hospitalized seriously ill patients was to receive a palliative care consult. Clinicians were randomized to 4 groups: Usual care Prognosis nudge – EHR prompt asking, do you think your patient will be alive in 6 months?

Patient-Centered 116

Patient-Centered Hospital IT Illness 116

GeriPal

OCTOBER 17, 2024

We talk about what is heart failure, particularly HFpEF, how we treat it (including the use of sodium–glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2’s), and how we should apply guidelines to individual patients, especially those with multimorbidity who are taking a lot of other medications. When I see a patient? Matthew, I get the lyrics.

Primary Care 113

Primary Care Patient-Centered IT Patients 113

GeriPal

APRIL 24, 2025

We and our guests have noticed that in our clinical practices, patients and caregivers seem to be asking for such treatments more frequently. Daneila Lamas wrote about this issue in the New York Times this week -after we recorded – in her story, a family requested an herbal infusion for their dying mother via feeding tube.

Patient-Centered 77

Patient-Centered IT Patients Illness 77

GeriPal

MARCH 24, 2022

Start by reading this article by Sean Morrison, Diane Meier, and Bob Arnold in JAMA , and this response from Rebecca Sudore, Susan Hickman, and Anne Walling. And especially for those who may have nontraditional families. This is the latest in our series of podcasts on concerns about, and potential of advance care planning.

Illness 72

Illness IT Healthcare Patient-Centered 72

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

He is associate professor at the University of Wisconsin and medical director of their Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. That screening influences kind of further treatment, actually, probably more importantly, patient outcomes. And when I asked the patient, well, what happened, the test was sprung on them.

Primary Care 95

Primary Care Diagnosis Screening IT 95

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Feyron has centered her work in Black/African American faith communities and churches – a program she titled Alter. Fayron: I think I was interested in family caregiving early on because I had it in my family, but it wasn’t until my postdoc days when I was writing my application that I needed to narrow it down.

Community 128

Community Family Families IT 128

GeriPal

AUGUST 17, 2023

However, as noted in our editorial published with the donanemab trial , the modest benefits of amyloid antibodies would likely not be questioned by patients, clinicians, or payers if amyloid antibodies were low risk, inexpensive, and simple to administer. However, they are none of these. Welcome back to the GeriPal podcast, Jason.

Patient-Centered 98

Patient-Centered IT Clinic Patients 98

GeriPal

APRIL 6, 2023

Today we have a star-studded lineup, including Lexy Torke of Indiana University, who discusses her RCT of a chaplaincy intervention for surrogates of patients in the ICU , published in JPSM and plenary presentation at AAHPM/HPNA. These studies are important. It meets in-person, once a month, over nine sessions.

Patient-Centered 99

Patient-Centered IT Family Families 99

GeriPal

JANUARY 26, 2023

Our guests Tim Farrell, Ramona Rhodes, and Nancy Lunderbjerg wrote an article in JAGS on this issue, and Sharon Brangman wrote a separate JAGS article on the need to achieve diversity in study populations. The article was titled, “ Change is coming ” – which also gives you a hint as to today’s song request. Eric: Yes.

IT 91

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Patients 91

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

First, in our editorial, we expressed concern about the length of stay metric not being patient centric, though important for health systems focused on cost savings. And PAIR stands for the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center. Also a core faculty member at the PAIR Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Consulting 120

Consulting Hospital Patient-Centered IT 120

GeriPal

APRIL 13, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary Social connections impact our health in profound ways, whether it is the support we receive from family and friends in navigating serious illness, the joy from shared social activities, or connecting with our community. But, should we as clinicians care about the social lives of our patients?

IT 99

IT Community Patient-Centered Medical 99

GeriPal

JANUARY 20, 2023

But if you want to learn more, check out these links: The report by NASEM titled “ The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality ” The website for the Moving Forward We will also link to the JAGS articles co-authored by seven committee members that focus on specific recommendations of the NASEM report when they get published (stay tuned).

Finance 95

Finance Board-Certified IT Provider 95

GeriPal

APRIL 10, 2025

I asked emergency medicine clinicians what they thought when a patient who is seriously ill and DNR comes to the ED, and some responded, (paraphrasing), what are they doing here? Most emergency providers wanted to do the right thing for seriously ill patients, but they didnt have the knowledge, skills, or experience to do it.

Patient-Centered 77

Patient-Centered Hospital IT Patients 77