Physicians Alliance of Connecticut

MAY 15, 2025

Make An Impact on Your Community Healthcare is more than a job — it’s a calling. Many healthcare professionals are drawn to the field because they want to help others and make a positive impact on people’s lives. For some, that involves providing high-quality care to individual patients.

Healthcare 52

Healthcare Healthcare Professional Insurance Provider 52

GeriPal

JANUARY 12, 2023

But if ACE units are so great, why do so few hospitals have them? Kellie Flood’s paper in JAMA IM showing that not only ACE units deliver better care, but also help with the hospitals bottom line. Eric: And we’re going to be talking about improving hospital care for older adults via ACE units, or acute care for elders.

Hospital 101

Hospital Patient-Centered IT Nurse Practitioner 101

GeriPal

JULY 19, 2024

So we measure things like hospitalizations and ed visits and the like, and those data are a bit weaker, but they’re also, you know, I think they need to be contextualized in what, why we would even want to reduce hospitalizations right. We talk about diagnosis, et cetera, but it’s almost more of a community conversation.

Screening 120

Screening Primary Care Patient-Centered IT 120

GeriPal

MAY 19, 2022

Dr. Akhila Reddy and colleagues study looking at converting hospitalized cancer patients from IV hydromorphone to PO morphine, PO hydromorphone, or PO oxycodone. Eric: But is that just something special about methadone and buprenorphine? Pallimed post on “ Simplifying Opioid Conversions ”. So, there’s no big differences.

IT 139

IT Patients Individual Relationship 139

GeriPal

JANUARY 25, 2024

You can also listen to an audio interview with Alex and JAMA Deputy Editor Preeti Malani about this study and the other RCT of default palliative care for hospitalized older adults with noncancer serious illness published in the same issue. In their communities? With their regular providers? Why this particular population?

Patient-Centered 123

Patient-Centered IT Illness Patients 123

GeriPal

MAY 25, 2023

Sarah Nouri, Hillary Lum, and LJ Van Scoy argue that diverse communities are asking for ACP. Sarah Nouri gives an example from her work in the LGBTQ+ community of a trans woman who was buried as a man because existing laws/rules did not protect her wishes. I would like to request the Friendship Train by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Community 96

Community IT Patient-Centered Primary Care 96

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. So I really opted to specialize in lung cancer because I thought that was the appropriate population to build a supportive and palliative care research agenda.

Illness 111

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 111

GeriPal

MAY 8, 2025

Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. So in our trial, because of security reasons, we are required by Health Canada to store the substance in a special secure area in my office. So it really helped form community between patients and helped build community with the palliative team that was involved.

Illness 109

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 109

GeriPal

APRIL 10, 2025

Today we discuss: Why the study was negative for the primary (hospitalization) and all secondary outcome (e.g. primary palliative care interventions seem to fail, whereas specialized palliative care interventions have a relatively robust track record of success. Tammie 03:04 Depends on how long they were pre-hospital.

Patient-Centered 78

Patient-Centered IT Hospital Patients 78

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

So I make the point, they often say, “Oh, you have this special population,” like pediatrics, where it’s 10% or something. And because, it’s a little kid in a candy store, so many different choices for quote, unquote, “community oncologists,” and perhaps even for academic oncologists.

Patient-Centered 130

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 130

GeriPal

MAY 22, 2025

When we started doing more music stuff for our patients in the hospital, a lot of people started to think, hmm, what would I want to listen to? My voice is nothing special. So our inpatient hospitals are kind of under resourced for music therapy. Like, it’s like a hospital. Tyler 01:43 Okay. Alex 09:00 Not true.

IT 98

IT Patient-Centered Patients Board-Certified 98

GeriPal

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Of note: these lessons apply to geriatrics, primary care, hospital medicine, critical care, cancer care, etc, etc. If they don’t, they know how to get to community resources. There are very few palliative care fellowships for social workers, very few specialized programs who teach palliative care as a specialty area.

Screening 121

Screening IT Families Family 121

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

We need to figure out how to create this community of palliative care social work scholars. It creates that community where you’re like, “Oh, I’m not alone. And I’ve got a whole community of people to support me.” And then when that funding stream stopped, we thought we can’t stop this.

IT 102

IT Families Family Clinic 102

GeriPal

DECEMBER 5, 2024

Alex 00:23 All right, first, we’re welcoming back Ricky Le it er, who’s a palliative care doc at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Brigham Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is co-founder of the Palliative Story Exchange. So has a special resonance for, I think, a lot of people who are Tragically H ip fans.

IT 108

IT Community Patients Families 108

GeriPal

MARCH 28, 2024

Kate: It was done in 10 hospitals, 17 ICUs in Atrium Health down in North Carolina. Asking clinicians to document prognosis did not change the primary outcome of hospital length of stay or really any of the secondary outcomes, which I’ll get into. Also the same hospital system? That’s when they got enrolled.

Consulting 116

Consulting Patient-Centered Patients IT 116

GeriPal

AUGUST 25, 2022

Eric: Alex, we have a super special today. We’ve got a hospice super special. Alex: We have a hospice super special day. Eric: We have a smorgasbord, if you will, of papers that got published recently around hospice, and that’s why we’re calling it a hospice super special. -@AlexSmithMD. Transcript.

Families 107

Families Family IT Patients 107

GeriPal

APRIL 28, 2022

So for those listening to the podcast, this is a clown looking very sad and what looks like a hospital administrator. And the hospital administrator says, “No, the hospital definitely values your contributions to the interdisciplinary team. Eric: Speaking of a niche humor, I love this one. Nathan: Yeah.

IT 145

IT Hospital Patients Illness 145

GeriPal

AUGUST 31, 2023

Alex: She’s also associate professor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Harvard Medical School. I was asking about what was going to be special about the trip or if they were going to do things with their family. They’re like, “Everyone wants to make every moment of our day special.” Juliet: Lund, yeah.

Illness 129

Illness IT Diagnose Medical 129

GeriPal

MARCH 30, 2023

Today we’re going to be talking about narrative writing specifically for healthcare professionals. It feels special to me. She’s not in hospice, and you’re talking about admitting her to the hospital. The first one we did with Louise Aronson and Rosanne Leipzig on Writing for the Lay Public.

IT 96

IT Patient-Centered Patients Healthcare 96

GeriPal

MARCH 24, 2023

Usually I don’t put a lot of background on this podcast, but I got to … in November of 2022, Ava Kofman, along with ProPublica, published … well I won’t want to say great, published an article in The New Yorker that I think it was divisive in the hospice and palliative care community. Now it’s 70%.

IT 115

IT Provider Patients Families 115

GeriPal

OCTOBER 6, 2022

Even with this whole discussion about diversity, even in our regular community, we are not actually making progress when you look at nationally weighted surveys. We have a problem in the field that we’re considered the acute death team at the hospital. So that’s the other part. So, it’s kind of on top of that.

Illness 101

Illness Patient-Centered IT Nurse Practitioner 101

GeriPal

MAY 9, 2024

Alex: Generally in the hospital-based hospice. Matt: I’m more of a hospital guy. So I think that people like us feel more comfortable just talking to the public because that’s what we do every day of our careers, but not in the confines of a clinic or a hospital room. Alex: Not frequently, no. Sammy: Oh, okay.

Education 128

Education IT Illness Healthcare 128

GeriPal

JUNE 29, 2023

This week we’re going on to episode two, which is for me one of the most special episodes we’ve done in GeriPal for a very, very long time. Eric: And in the end, we have a very special part where we actually get a tour of their gardens outside of the hospice unit. Alex: This is Alex Smith. What do I want to do?”

IT 97

IT Families Family Board-Certified 97

GeriPal

APRIL 6, 2023

On the other hand, all of our guests agree that chaplains are often the most vulnerable to being cut from hospital and health system budgets. These hick pick codes are available to any chaplain in a healthcare system. They followed them during the course of their hospital stay. These studies are important. Lexy: Yeah.

IT 99

IT Patient-Centered Families Family 99

GeriPal

JUNE 13, 2024

Alex 02:20 (singing) “ Well, you wake up in the morning you hear the church bell ring and they march you to the table to see the same old thing ain’t no food upon the table ain’t no pork up in the pan but you better not complain boy, you get in trouble with a man let the midnight special shine a light on me.

Illness 134

Illness Patient-Centered Patients IT 134

GeriPal

JUNE 5, 2025

Despite these substantial needs, specialized palliative care beyond hospice is rare in nursing homes. How to think about primary and specialized palliative care in this setting. And so they’re in there for a very short time, couple weeks, get a little bit stronger and transition home after a hospitalization.

Nurse Practitioner 78

Nurse Practitioner Referral Consulting Board-Certified 78

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Hospital Chaplains, Spirituality, and Pain Management: A Qualitative Study. Naomi: Well, I have a special place of not being a doctor within this great group of people. The post The Nature of Suffering: BJ Miller and Naomi Saks appeared first on A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast for Every Healthcare Professional.

IT 137

IT Families Family Physicals 137

GeriPal

MARCH 10, 2022

On today’s podcast we dive into drivers of invasive procedures and hospitalizations in advanced dementia by talking to some pretty brilliant nursing and nurse practitioner researchers focused on dementia, geriatrics, and palliative care in nursing homes: Ruth Palan Lopez, Caroline Stephens, Joan Carpenter, and Lauren Hunt. Ruth: Thank you.

Nurse Practitioner 60

Nurse Practitioner Hospital Families Family 60

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 20, 2025

And we often do, as healthcare providers, care for people who are going through traumatic events, through just being sick in the hospital or a home or dying at home. Certainly a lot of communities we’re thinking about LA right now and the collective trauma that they’re experiencing from the fires. Kate 41:32 Yeah.

Patient-Centered 67

Patient-Centered IT Individual Screening 67

GeriPal

AUGUST 8, 2024

Eric 00:05 And Alex, we have a special episode today — B etween T wo U rns. You know, in other places, in most rural communities, the dead are laid out in their own beds, which is very often where they died. The thing about green burial is it emphasizes participation by the next of canon, the immediate family in the community.

IT 125

IT Families Family Relationship 125

GeriPal

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Leslie Wharton is a leader in the 26,000 member grassroots organization Elders Climate Action , which organizes older adults to create communities engaged in making a difference at local, state, and national levels. As we age, our body’s capacity to adapt to things becomes a little more challenge. What does that actually look like?

Healthcare 130

Healthcare IT Education Community 130

GeriPal

APRIL 20, 2023

Today we talk with Margot Kushel about how we got here, including: That sense of powerlessness as a clinician when you “fix up” a patient in the hospital, only to discharge them to the street knowing things will fall apart. We would admit them to the hospital. Who doesn’t want to leave the hospital? Margot: Yes.

Mental Health 124

Mental Health IT Community Individual 124

GeriPal

APRIL 21, 2022

This has become a community of people all over the world who come together every week. They’ve created a whole community of people who know each other just by listening to the words that they allow through and the vulnerability that they show to people they don’t even know. Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Patient-Centered 93

Patient-Centered IT Community Illness 93

GeriPal

JULY 25, 2024

Next, we talk with James Deardorff about whether we can accurately predict nursing home level of care in community-dwelling older adults with dementia. Eric 00:13 And Alex, we have a super special today, three different articles. Alex 00:18 Prognosis, super special today. Eric 25:08 Super special. James 25:10 Exactly.

Families 108

Families Family Patient-Centered Patients 108

GeriPal

MAY 1, 2025

And when she was here, she co founded the Golden Compass Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital for older adults living with HIV. So it felt like it was being part of this huge kind of change in the whole environment and the whole experience of that community. In San Francisco, HIV care was more specialized in that.

Primary Care 96

Primary Care IT Clinic Provider 96

GeriPal

JUNE 6, 2024

On today’s podcast Areej El-Jawahri, oncologist specializing in blood cancers at MGH, says that sexual health is one of the top if not the top issue among cancer survivors. Alex 00:06 We are delighted to welcome back Areej El-Jawahri, who’s an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who specializes in blood cancers.

Illness 131

Illness IT Physicals Patients 131

GeriPal

DECEMBER 21, 2023

The way we were treating him with dementia in the hospital, the way we talked about him, that he’s not there. Malaz: … to restrain them in the hospital. He created fee for service, special fee for depression. So what that means is I take care of you just in my clinic, just in my hospital. And I was terrified.

Patient-Centered 126

Patient-Centered IT Families Family 126