Rao Doctor

APRIL 3, 2025

In my previous article I covered the types of illness and the causes. One of the primary tools used in diagnosing fever is the thermometer, an instrument that measures body temperature. Infrared thermometers, which measure temperature from the forehead or ear, are also prevalent in clinical settings. FEVER FAQs (contd.)

Diagnosis 130

Diagnosis Management Illness Diagnose 130

GeriPal

JANUARY 18, 2024

In particular, we talk about Katie’s and Jesica’s paper in NEJM titled “ Juggling Two Full-Time Jobs — Methadone Clinic Engagement and Cancer Care ,” which described the difficulty in managing cancer pain and methadone for opioid use disorder. Who do we have with us today? I look forward to your findings of your study. Devon: Thanks so much.

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening IT 136

GeriPal

APRIL 14, 2022

On today’s podcast we talk with three experts on buprenorphine on why, when, and how to use it in serious illness. Adapting Palliative Care Skills to Provide Substance Use Disorder Treatment to Patients With Serious Illness . Katie, before we jump into the topic of buprenorphine in serious illness, what’s the song request?

Illness 102

Illness Patient-Centered IT Patients 102

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Coming off as rote and scripted during a serious illness conversation can have a similar off-putting impact on patients and families. And I think also some of the stuff we’ll be talking about, when it comes to communication, I mean, a lot of the clinical encounter is listening to the music. Eric: So yeah. It flows very well.

Illness 101

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 101

GeriPal

JUNE 13, 2024

Summary Transcript Summary I always find cachexia in serious illness puzzling. In today’s podcast, we had the opportunity to learn from a renowned expert in palliative care, Eduardo Bruera, about cachexia and anorexia in serious illness. So cachexia, I would put it involuntary weight loss is the number one way to diagnose it.

Illness 133

Illness Patient-Centered Patients IT 133

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

Substance use disorder is one of those complex issues in which clinical practice is changing rapidly. Today we talk with experts Janet Ho, Sach Kale, and Julie Childers about opioid use disorder and serious illness. Sach Kale set up an outpatient clinic focused on substance use disorder for patients with cancer. What do they do?

Patients 72

Patients Clinic Patient-Centered Illness 72

GeriPal

JANUARY 30, 2025

Find out on this weeks podcast where we invite Joseph Greer, Simone Rinaldi, and Vicki Jackson to talk about their recent JAMA article on Telehealth vs In-Person Early Palliative Care for Patients With Advanced Lung Cancer – A Multisite Randomized Clinical Trial. So no differences between the modalities.

Telehealth 105

Telehealth Patient-Centered IT Patients 105

GeriPal

JUNE 9, 2022

Clinical growth of geriatrics programs has lagged academic research, despite the rapid aging of the population. . We can’t possibly meet the needs of all people with newly diagnosed serious illness. She’s also a member of the PAIR Center, which stands for Palliative Advanced Illness Research Center. Kate: Sure.

Consulting 99

Consulting Patient-Centered Diagnosis Referral 99

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. Today we talk with two psychologists who are deeply invested in addressing psychological aspects of care for people living with serious illness. That rings true to me.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

Social workers augment a team’s ability to provide whole-person care, often aiding to identify and meaningfully address the wide variety of challenges and unmet needs faced by individuals and families facing serious illness. Jennifer Temel study did not have a social worker as part of the clinical team. So … Barbara: Yeah.

IT 102

IT Families Family Clinic 102

GeriPal

JULY 21, 2022

Love to talk about also in the serious illness population. I don’t practice clinically in outpatient settings, and often the folks I’m seeing are there for other kinds of issues. Eric: Let’s say I have a panel of older adults that I’m seeing, or a palliative care outpatient clinic. Is this our role?

IT 102

IT Families Family Diagnosis 102

GeriPal

JULY 28, 2022

GeriPal post on “fast food” style palliative care in chronic critical illness. Areej: So when I was in college, I had a close friend who had a serious illness and actually died as a result of cancer. I entered medical school and I did a course that was offered that’s called living with a life threatening illness.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

So, the question becomes, what, if anything, should we do differently in the primary care setting to diagnose the disease? We address the following questions with Nate: Has anything changed for the primary care doctor when diagnosing Alzheimers? So let’s just say you have a healthy 55 year old or 65 year old in your clinic.

Primary Care 95

Primary Care Diagnosis Screening IT 95

GeriPal

JUNE 15, 2023

Alex: And joining us via Zoom, we have Charlotta Lindvall, who is a palliative care physician researcher who studies the intersection of natural language processing and communication data at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where she also works in clinical informatics. Welcome to the GeriPal podcast, Charlotta. Charlotta: Thank you.

IT 99

IT Patient-Centered Patients Healthcare 99

GeriPal

OCTOBER 20, 2022

There’s the complications associated with immune senescence, comorbidities, atypical clinical presentations. And I think that’s where this clinical trial which looked at seven versus 14 days was really practice-changing for many of us. It’s very rare and they may be a male patient. So you’re right.

Complication 52

Complication Patient-Centered IT Patients 52

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

My favorite line from Emily’s paper: “Geriatric assent has not been widely adopted in clinical care, but bioethicists should advocate for this, as adoption of partial-involvement strategies can prolong the period in which individuals are (appropriately) engaged in decisions about their health care.” This is a clinical intervention.

Families 97

Families Family Patient-Centered IT 97

GeriPal

JANUARY 11, 2024

To be eligible in Canada patients must have a “ grievous and irremediable ” condition, including disability ; they do not have to have a terminal illness with a prognosis of less than 6 months. A planned expansion of MAID to include people with mental illness was placed on hold until March 2024. Bill, welcome back to GeriPal.

Illness 144

Illness IT Medical Provider 144

GeriPal

MAY 9, 2024

all of whom focus their efforts on educating the general public about living and dying with a serious illness. Alex: And Sammy Winemaker, who’s a palliative care physician and Associate Clinical Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Family Medicine, Division of Palliative Care. Hsien: Hey, great to be here.

Education 127

Education IT Illness Healthcare 127

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. I moved to Baltimore in 2015 and did clinical fellowship in geriatrics.

IT 99

IT Community Patient-Centered Medical 99

GeriPal

JUNE 19, 2025

Eric 01:04 So we’re going to be talking about transgender health in older adults and those with serious illness. But you know, the clinical piece, I think it starts out with collecting sexual orientation, gender identity in your databases. Happy pride and thanks for the invitation, Alex and E. And great to meet Jace on here.

Individual 85

Individual Community IT Chronic Condition 85

GeriPal

APRIL 4, 2024

She was resuscitated by EMS, but did not regain higher brain function, and was eventually diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. In case you miss the introductions at the start of the podcast, Bernie and Laurie are married, and offer wonderful reminiscence of their clinical practice over the last several decades.

Families 112

Families Family Patient-Centered IT 112

GeriPal

MARCH 24, 2023

Full disclosure, I talked with Ava Kofman a bunch while she was preparing that article, and I thought based on my professional experience working in hospice, things that I had seen, that she raised a lot of issues that I had personally encountered in my clinical experience. What I love about VITAS is I report to the CEO.

IT 113

IT Provider Patients Families 113

GeriPal

AUGUST 24, 2023

Fox gives patients hope there may be a place that illness doesn’t touch Depression is a Liar Why is Being a Patient Such a Difficult Pill to Swallow Better Patient Care Calls for a ‘Platinum Rule’ to Replace the Golden One. And that includes what we call illness-related concerns, the things that are directly mediated by the illness itself.

Patient-Centered 98

Patient-Centered Patients IT Illness 98

GeriPal

MARCH 7, 2024

He looked very ill. We are doulas for those with serious illness and those at end-of-life, just a longitudinal relationship, nonmedical support to provide presence. There were rules a little bit, because the healthcare system likes to have some level of consistency as people move in. Eric: Is end-of-life doula death doula?

Provider 117

Provider Illness IT Healthcare 117

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

For example, we spend the first half talking about a RCT simulation study of clinician verbal and non-verbal communication with a seriously ill patient with cancer. Amber tells the moving story of how these findings led a clinical colleague, her chief, to question and change his behavior. Welcome to the GeriPal Podcast, Amber.

Patient-Centered 111

Patient-Centered Patients IT Healthcare 111

GeriPal

AUGUST 25, 2022

And yet, we know little about the clinical experience of people with dementia in hospice. And yet, disenrollment from hospice, either due to patient/family revoking the benefit or stabilization of illness (extended prognosis) is remarkably high for people with dementia among some hospices. What motivated you? Lauren: Yeah.

Families 106

Families Family IT Patients 106

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

The last time this happened to me I immediately went on the defensive despite years of training in serious illness communication skills. Alex: And we’re delighted to welcome back to the GeriPal podcast, Keri Brenner, who is also a psychiatrist and palliative care doctor and clinical associate professor at Stanford.

Patients 109

Patients IT Families Family 109

GeriPal

OCTOBER 27, 2022

As Alex Lee says on our podcast today, all prognostic models will be wrong (in some circumstances and for some patients); our job is to make prognostic models that are clinically useful. As Sei Lee notes, the argument for developing prognostic models has won the day, and we increasingly use prognostic scores in clinical decision making.

IT 95

IT Clinic Screening Patients 95

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

So what I saw in the clinical space also both in the United States and in my home country of The Bahamas just made it made sense for me to look into this a little bit more. I’m concerned about how can I get my dad diagnosed or get this proper care.” Alex: Yeah. Karen: Yeah. This is what they’re projecting.”

Community 128

Community Families Family IT 128

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

And PAIR stands for the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center. So, Alex, imagine you’re a seriously-ill hospitalized patient and I’m your doctor, unluckily for you. But you could have clustering within clinics, within clinicians who care for a panel of patients, that sort of thing.

Consulting 120

Consulting Hospital Patient-Centered IT 120

GeriPal

OCTOBER 3, 2024

How the act of drawing can help us sloooow down, pay attention to the people and world around us, and ultimately let go… The possibility of incorporating drawings in research and even clinical care. They had triple diagnoses, often life threatening illness, but also mental illness and usually some kind of addiction.

IT 122

IT Patient-Centered Patients Relationship 122

GeriPal

JUNE 26, 2025

But from our clinical work, many of us are familiar with people with dementia who experience sudden shocks to their health, think hip fracture, think hospitalization for pneumonia. Sometimes people call them health shocks, but we kind of all, like, clinically, intuitively know what these things are. Has really changed.

Illness 93

Illness Hospital IT Patient-Centered 93

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

So, for example, everyone who was diagnosed with an advanced or metastatic lung cancer had a prognosis on the order of months. Eric 07:31 A clinical perspective, why is it important to test this stepped care model versus implementing more? And there’s a mortality number of people who just can’t make it to get to our clinic.

Patient-Centered 119

Patient-Centered IT Patients Hospital 119

GeriPal

JUNE 6, 2024

Sharon Bober, clinical psychologist at DFCI, notes that clinicians can get caught in an anxiety cycle, in which they are afraid to ask, don’t ask, then have increased anxiety about not asking. Eric 01:13 So we got a lot to cover today on sexuality, sexual health and serious illness. Clearly this issue is important to patients.

Illness 130

Illness IT Physicals Patients 130

GeriPal

MARCH 27, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary A pragmatic trial evaluates the effectiveness of a treatment or intervention in real-world clinical practice. Alex 02:44 Still suffering from some illness from there, which is why I was sick and not in the office with Eric today. We did it by the clinic level. I’ve had fun relearning Spanish.

Primary Care 79

Primary Care IT Clinic Patient-Centered 79

GeriPal

JULY 25, 2024

The PPS is one of the most widely used prognostic tools for seriously ill patients, but the prognostic estimates given by the PPS are based on data that is well over a decade old. So the palliative performance scale, or PPS, is essentially a tool to help clinicians with prognostication for seriously ill or palliative care populations.

Families 106

Families Family Patient-Centered Patients 106

GeriPal

MAY 1, 2025

One in 10 people with newly diagnosed HIV is an older adult. Funding for research and clinical care is at risk, as USAID and PEPFAR (which is under USAID), are shuttered. And when she was here, she co founded the Golden Compass Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital for older adults living with HIV. Eric 16:08 Yeah.

Primary Care 94

Primary Care IT Provider Clinic 94