GeriPal

MAY 5, 2022

We talk with Nick and Meg about: Why hearing loss is important not just in geriatrics but also for those caring for seriously ill individuals. Or, do we know anything even how common it is, serious illness, palliative care populations? How to screen for hearing loss. Eric: And how do we screen for it? It’s amazing.

IT 102

IT Screening Hospital Clinic 102

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. Should we use Ozempic (if we can find it) in patients with serious illness, which often results in undesirable and profound weight loss? How high is too high?

Diabetes 73

Diabetes Management Patient-Centered Family 73

GeriPal

JUNE 12, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary If you’re anything like me, you might find the process of what happens to patients when they visit a radiation oncologist somewhat mysterious. Anish 01:02 Well, I speak, you know, from a physician lens of some of the patients that I get referred, and by the time there’s. This is not a good option.

Patient-Centered 102

Patient-Centered Referral Patients IT 102

GeriPal

MAY 8, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary Weve covered psychedelics on the podcast beforefirst in 2019 with Ira Byock, where we explored their potential role in medicine , and then again in 2023 with Stacy Fischer, Brian Anderson, and Theora Cimino, focusing on the reasons to approach psychedelic use in patients with caution. This is Eric Widera.

Illness 107

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 107

Rao Doctor

APRIL 3, 2025

In my previous article I covered the types of illness and the causes. Rectal method is more appropriate for infants, children and unconscious or comatose patients who are not able to hold the thermometer in their mouth. Understanding the patient’s medical history is crucial for an accurate diagnosis. FEVER FAQs (contd.)

Diagnosis 130

Diagnosis Management Illness Diagnose 130

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

Plum Health

OCTOBER 11, 2024

These services go beyond treating illnesses; they aim to keep you healthy in the first place. Your ongoing appointments help foster a strong patient-doctor relationship , making it easier to discuss your concerns and receive personalized care. Non-life-threatening illnesses often demand quick relief options. What is in a clinic?

Clinic 52

Clinic Primary Care Doctor Primary Care Chronic Condition 52

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 consulting for Papa Health. And PAIR stands for the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center.

Consulting 120

Consulting Hospital Patient-Centered IT 120

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Coping in the setting of serious illness. Coping in the setting of a serious illness about a patient encounter you had with somebody who used an. You probably haven’t read in a while what that patient encounter was like. Coping is something that we see our patients do. This is Eric Widera.

Illness 125

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 125

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. Transcript Eric: Welcome to the GeriPal podcast. This is Eric Widera.

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening IT 136

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

Have you ever had that moment when talking to a patient, when you realized that the phrase you just uttered, which you’ve uttered a hundred times before, came out rote and scripted? And in response, the family or patient looked at you like you were from another planet? Summary Transcript Summary. Yeah, I’ve been there too.

Illness 101

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 101

GeriPal

JANUARY 25, 2024

Summary Transcript Summary In a JAMA 2020 systematic review of palliative care for non-cancer serious illness, Kieran Quinn found many positives, as we discussed on our podcast and in our editorial. He also found gaps, including very few studies of patients with lung disease, and little impact of trials on quality of life.

Patient-Centered 122

Patient-Centered IT Illness Patients 122

GeriPal

AUGUST 29, 2024

Summary Transcript CME Summary Serious illness communication is hard. During the podcast, we reference a newly released second-edition book that our guests published titled “ Navigating Communication with Seriously Ill Patients: Balancing Honesty with Empathy and Hope.” Eric 01:42 So we’ ve got an exciting topic today.

IT 132

IT Illness Family Families 132

GeriPal

OCTOBER 5, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary Communicating about a serious illness is hard. Last week’s podcast we talked about the challenge around miscommunication in serious illness. This week we dive into the challenges with communication when it comes to life sustaining treatments and CPR. This is Eric Widera. Alex: This is Alex Smith.

Illness 136

Illness IT Patient-Centered Family 136

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

Today we talk with experts Janet Ho, Sach Kale, and Julie Childers about opioid use disorder and serious illness. We address: Why is caring for patients with this overlap so hard? Sach Kale set up an outpatient clinic focused on substance use disorder for patients with cancer. What is making this hard for me? What do they do?

Patients 72

Patients Clinic Patient-Centered Illness 72

GeriPal

DECEMBER 19, 2024

Still, we havent talked about integrating palliative care into psychiatry or in the care of those with severe mental illness. What does it look like to take a palliative approach to severe mental illness? Is “terminal” mental illness a thing? Eric 01:34 Oh, I love that. Dani 01:36 More to talk about there.

Illness 101

Illness Mental Health IT Patient-Centered 101

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. Consultations versus telehealth. But watch out! Alex 01:06 Yeah, go in person.

Telehealth 105

Telehealth Patient-Centered IT Patients 105

GeriPal

JUNE 9, 2022

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. And palliative care was as a program was just growing at Penn moving from just consult hospice to actually having a team when I was training.

Consulting 99

Consulting Patient-Centered Diagnosis IT 99

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary Think about the last time a patient yelled at you in anger. The last time this happened to me I immediately went on the defensive despite years of training in serious illness communication skills. Ask why: What is underneath the anger for this particular patient? Taking care of the hateful patient.

Patients 109

Patients IT Family Families 109

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. Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient. What Mattered Then, Now, and Always: Illness Narratives From Persons of Color. What’s in a story?

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

GeriPal

OCTOBER 6, 2022

Earlier this year palliative care was the correct response to the following clue on the game show Jeopardy: From a Latin word for “to cloak”, it’s the type of care given to seriously ill patients to provide comfort without curing. We had tried to actually select people who didn’t have a serious illness. Marian: Thank you.

Illness 101

Illness Patient-Centered IT Nurse Practitioner 101

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

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?” Lynn: I do. Alex, can you play Send the Sun, by Nikki Lane?

Family 97

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 97

GeriPal

JUNE 15, 2023

” And Bing responded, I should ask about how AI can help identify patients who need palliative care and reduce hospitalizations, what are the benefits and challenges of using AI in decision-making, communication, palliative care, and how could AI support the quality of life and dignity of patients for those who are receiving palliative care?

IT 99

IT Patient-Centered Patients Healthcare 99

GeriPal

MARCH 28, 2024

What we did was ask clinicians earlier in the ICU stay for very sick patients to document prognosis, and for those who they thought would survive, to document six-month functional prognosis. Eric: And who are the patients including in this trial, again? Kate: These are very sick patients. And that’s it. Kate: Sure.

Consulting 115

Consulting Patient-Centered IT Patients 115

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

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Along the way we address: Is this degree of slowed cognitive decline meaningful to patients or care partners? Eric: So patient narrative storytelling, independent of what we call it, I’d like to turn to both of you and just how you got interested in this as a subject. She was a heart failure patient.

IT 105

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Illness 105

GeriPal

MAY 4, 2023

But when I have, I find that they’re often some of the hardest patients to care for. I just had this experience where in the space I was in, very few people believed that this was even a legit thing to study and certainly that it would make a difference for the patients we cared for. Eric: Yeah.

IT 83

IT Family Families Illness 83

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

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. Bernie Lo discloses being an Honorarium Recipient and consultant for Takeda starting on 01/23/2024.

Family 112

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 112

GeriPal

JANUARY 11, 2024

In further contrast to the United States, MAID in Canada is almost entirely administered by a clinician, whereas in the United States patients must self administer. A planned expansion of MAID to include people with mental illness was placed on hold until March 2024. They could have a prognosis of years, or decades.

Illness 144

Illness IT Medical Provider 144

GeriPal

JUNE 5, 2025

nursing homes grapple with serious illnesses, and roughly half experience dementia. Eric 03:25 So we have a lot to talk about, but I’m wondering if we can kind of take a big step back and just talk about the patient population that’s in nursing homes. Consider this: the majority of the 1.4 million adults residing in U.S.

Nurse Practitioner 78

Nurse Practitioner Referral Consulting Board-Certified 78

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. And that’s how we connected.

IT 128

IT Family Families Patient-Centered 128

GeriPal

APRIL 28, 2022

Eric: I’m looking forward to talking about art and humor in palliative care and we’re caring for seriously ill patients. If you look back to some of my cartoons from late in residency, they showed just how dehumanized I felt and definitely give windows into how dehumanized I imagined my patients to be. Nathan: I do.

IT 145

IT Hospital Patients Illness 145

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. Summary Transcript Summary. She falls and breaks her hip.

Patient-Centered 101

Patient-Centered Complication Patients IT 101

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. Participants were critically ill and intubated. P AI R stands for Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center.

Patient-Centered 116

Patient-Centered Hospital IT Illness 116

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. If its potentially unsafe, but has robust evidence, well thats most of the treatments we offer seriously ill patients! Think chemotherapy to imminently dying patients, or CPR.

Patient-Centered 77

Patient-Centered IT Patients Illness 77