Aspiring Minority Doctor

DECEMBER 17, 2023

I am also grateful for my family who stepped in after graduation and let my daughter come live with them so I could focus on intern year (they refused to let me move her to "dangerous" Philly lol) after not matching the first time. Later on in the month, I was able to take my daughter on a family trip to my alma mater LSU.

Medical Student 52

Medical Student IT Medical Management 52

GeriPal

JUNE 8, 2023

When I’m on palliative care consults and attending in our hospice unit we have to counsel patients about deprescribing and de-intensifying diabetes medications. And we invited Tamryn Gray from the Dana Farber joins us to ask insightful questions, including: What blood sugar range should we target for patients in the nursing home or hospice?

Diabetes 73

Diabetes Management Patient-Centered Family 73

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

DECEMBER 14, 2023

More recently Sharon Kaufman ‘s book And a Time to Die described the ways in which physicians, nurses, hospital systems, and payment mechanisms influenced the hour and manner of patient’s deaths. Today Liz Dzeng discusses her journey towards studying this issue in detail. So Liz, let’s jump into the topic.

Hospital 125

Hospital IT Patient-Centered Patients 125

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? Big randomized control study that came out. Lyndsay: Yes.

Patient-Centered 122

Patient-Centered IT Illness Patients 122

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

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?” That’s a huge amount of news all at once. Lynn: I do.

Family 97

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 97

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

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?

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

GeriPal

JANUARY 30, 2025

In one corner, weighing in at decades of experience, well known for heavy hits of bedside assessments, strong patient-family relationships, and a knockout punch of interdisciplinary collaboration, we have in-person palliative care consults. But watch out! Travel time can leave this champ vulnerable to fatigue and no-shows.

Telehealth 105

Telehealth Patient-Centered IT Patients 105

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.

Patient-Centered 132

Patient-Centered Hospital Patients IT 132

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

APRIL 4, 2024

The hospital refused without a court order, and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. 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.

Family 112

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 112

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

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

JULY 28, 2022

Alex: And we are also delighted to welcome Areej El-Jawahri, who is an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital as well, who specializes in blood cancers. 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. Jennifer: Thanks.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

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. Des: Thank you so much.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

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

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

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. Many were community hospitals. The intervention was a negative study for the primary outcome, hospital length of stay.

Patient-Centered 116

Patient-Centered Hospital IT Illness 116

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Hospital Chaplains, Spirituality, and Pain Management: A Qualitative Study. I think even the word patient, patient, I think, comes from the word suffer, the one who suffers. Alex: I wonder when we talk about it, because we’ll have links to both Eric Cassell’s argument, and we mentioned another article from Tate.

IT 137

IT Family Families Physicals 137

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

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Patients may feel like falls are just part of normal aging. If you want to do a deeper dive into some of the articles we discuss, take a look at the following: An awesome JAMA review by Sarah on fall risk assessment and prevention in community-dwelling adults. I think both the patients feel that. Sarah 00:28 Thanks so much.

IT 124

IT Patient-Centered Screening Community 124

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 IT 136

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

AUGUST 11, 2022

Susan led the Project on Death in America’s Faculty Scholars program , used her dual training in internal medicine and psychiatry to shine a light on psychosocial aspects of palliative care, and founded the Department of Psychosocial Care at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. . Susan: Thank you.

Illness 109

Illness IT Family Families 109

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

This week, we talk about the other major palliative care trial of default palliative care consults for hospitalized older adults with COPD, kidney disease, or dementia, published in the same issue of JAMA. And PAIR stands for the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center. and consulting for Papa Health.

Consulting 120

Consulting Hospital Patient-Centered IT 120

GeriPal

OCTOBER 19, 2023

Certainly SOME of those avoided hospitalizations, CPR, and ICU stays were due to documentation of those orders in the POLST. Caveat as well that RCTs should not be placed on pedestal as the only answer- often patients enrolled in RCTs do not represent real world patients – observational studies do. This is Eric Widera.

Patient-Centered 126

Patient-Centered IT Patients Illness 126

GeriPal

JUNE 30, 2022

You have a patient with dementia severe enough that she cannot recognize relatives. A huge part of this decision rests on (1) her previously stated wishes, values, and goals (prior to the onset of dementia); and (2) the outcomes of surgery for patients with dementia. Alex: And the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Transcript.

Patient-Centered 101

Patient-Centered Complication Patients IT 101

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 Patients 102

GeriPal

MARCH 2, 2023

The FDA-approved indications for gabapentin are only for treating patients with partial seizures or postherpetic neuralgia. valproic acid and gabapentin), in nursing homes, particularly patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. There are a lot of reasons that may explain the massive increase in use of these drugs.

Patient-Centered 96

Patient-Centered IT Healthcare Medical 96

GeriPal

JUNE 15, 2023

Alex: And we have Matt DeCamp, who’s joining from the University of Colorado, where he is a primary care internist and bioethicist at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities. My worry though with that is that are we going to be expected to be more productive then, to see more patients? Welcome to the GeriPal podcast, Charlotta.

IT 99

IT Patient-Centered Patients Healthcare 99

GeriPal

OCTOBER 5, 2023

We’ve invited Jacqueline Kruser and Bob Arnold on this week’s podcast to talk about their recently published JAMA Viewpoint article titled “ Reconsidering the Language of Serious Illness. ” You recently published an article in the New Yorker titled, I can’t even read my own, what was the title again? This is Eric Widera.

Illness 136

Illness IT Patient-Centered Family 136

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

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

MAY 25, 2023

Others cited the call from communities to meet them where they are – be they senior centers, Black-owned businesses, or churches (we have a podcast planned in the fall with Fayron Epps and Karen Moss on the church setting). And as you know, it’s a great article. Welcome to the GeriPal podcast. Hillary: So great to be here.

Community 95

Community IT Patient-Centered Primary Care 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 IT Hospital Patients 77