Mere Mortal MD

MAY 22, 2025

People are not usually fond of hospitals, especially if they happen to be the patient. A hospital is a place for sick people, a place where death lurks around the corner, where a blood sucking phlebotomist pokes around your veins after strapping a blue rubber band tightly around your upper arm. Thanks for reading Mere Mortal MD!

Hospital 221

Hospital Patients Nurse Practitioner IT 221

Adventures of a Sick Doctor

JUNE 5, 2021

But I thought about my friends and colleagues, my daily contacts and the faceless names on the hospital letters, and I thought about the pain and hurt in each of their hearts. In fact I was scared, and worried and uncertain, and it manifested in physical symptoms of dyspnoea, tachycardia and headrush. I went back to the Red Door.

GP 100

GP Screening Mental Health IT 100

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. One bump is just the classic pitfalls we often talk about in serious illness communication: being very jargony, very information focused, and just providing information. It flows very well. Eric: Yeah.

Illness 101

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 101

Plum Health

OCTOBER 11, 2024

These services go beyond treating illnesses; they aim to keep you healthy in the first place. Non-life-threatening illnesses often demand quick relief options. Urgent care clinics are ideal for treating illnesses like the flu, strep throat, or severe colds. It's not quite an emergency, but you need relief fast.

Clinic 52

Clinic Primary Care Doctor Primary Care Chronic Condition 52

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

Noreta Family Medicine

APRIL 17, 2024

Some family doctors work in a residency training program where they may see patients in the hospital, out of the hospital, and deliver babies. I enjoy seeing patients for all kinds of visits as well – mental health, physicals, GYN concerns, coughs/colds, etc. Other family doctors only see patients in their clinics.

Primary Care 52

Primary Care Board-Certified GP DO 52

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. Eric: Yeah.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

GeriPal

JULY 28, 2022

GeriPal post on “fast food” style palliative care in chronic critical illness. 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. Additional links: Editorial on Areej’s study. Palliative care in lung and GI cancers. Transcript.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

GeriPal

JUNE 9, 2022

Palliative care, in contrast, saw explosive growth in US hospitals. 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. I do tend to focus in the hospital setting.

Consulting 99

Consulting Patient-Centered Diagnosis Referral 99

GeriPal

JULY 21, 2022

Love to talk about also in the serious illness population. I’ve worked in hospital settings as an occupational therapist, inpatient rehab and outpatient rehab. Emmy: I was seeing people in the hospital setting, saying they had had a massive brain injury. Or somebody who has other physical cognitive problems at any age.

Family 102

Family Families IT Diagnosis 102

GeriPal

OCTOBER 20, 2022

Sonali: This seven versus 14 days for male UTI combines really well with the gram negative bacteriemia paper because sometimes we are faced with patients in the hospital which are disposition issue. So transmission of other drug resistant organisms and C difficile to other patients in the hospital reduces if you control.

Complication 52

Complication Patient-Centered IT Patients 52

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. So less than six months to live.

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. How you actually physically started doing this and built up so many followers over time and why are you doing it? We’ve invited: Julie McFadden (aka Hospice Nurse Julie ): Julie is a social media superstar, with 1.5

Education 127

Education Illness IT Healthcare 127

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

JANUARY 30, 2025

However, lack of physical presence may make this contender struggle to land the emotional support punch that is at the very heart of palliative care. We really spent a lot of time helping the clinicians see that a patient’s illness, understanding and prognostic awareness was just as important as their pain scale, their pain score.

Telehealth 105

Telehealth Patient-Centered IT Patients 105

PEMBlog

MARCH 27, 2024

Her name is Emily Groopman, and she’s a current resident at Children’s National Hospital. You won’t be able to diagnose them on history and physical alone. And biochemical testing is really needed in most cases to independently diagnose a specific IEM. will result in symptoms.

Consulting 59

Consulting Individual Family Families 59

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. It also feels like, I also grew up in med school in a three hospital system. We find the same thing when you actually measure at the level of the hospital.

Patient-Centered 111

Patient-Centered Patients IT Healthcare 111

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. Had multiple physical, psychological complications as a result of that. So tiny, tiny, in a hospital bed.

Patient-Centered 98

Patient-Centered Patients IT Illness 98

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. In fact from the time he was diagnosed, he passed away within two and a half weeks.

IT 99

IT Community Patient-Centered Medical 99

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. In a hospital in the morning, six people wake him up, they got a blood draw, they got everything else. And also the whole potential psychiatric diagnoses. How did you react?

Patients 109

Patients IT Family Families 109

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. Wait, so one key message is that social health is linked to physical and cognitive health?!? And they’re often a sign of (or cause of?) worsening prognosis.

Illness 93

Illness Hospital IT Patient-Centered 93

GeriPal

OCTOBER 27, 2022

Someone who’s healthy in their 60s and just got diagnosed with diabetes, yeah, they might benefit, if they have a very long life expectancy, to prevent that decline in kidney function. Those have a very, very long time horizon. And we’ve been slowly building that out. So Ken Covinsky liked to explain it as, “Well, if 0.5

IT 95

IT Clinic Screening Patients 95

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

Alex 00:34 We are delighted to welcome back Jennifer Tem e l, who is a thoracic oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. So, for example, everyone who was diagnosed with an advanced or metastatic lung cancer had a prognosis on the order of months. Alex This is Alex Smith Eric A nd Alex, who do we have with us today?

Patient-Centered 119

Patient-Centered IT Patients Hospital 119

GeriPal

JUNE 6, 2024

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. Eric 01:13 So we got a lot to cover today on sexuality, sexual health and serious illness. So we got a lot to cover on sexuality, sexual health, and serious illness.

Illness 130

Illness IT Physicals Patients 130

GeriPal

JULY 7, 2022

Haider is a physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the VA in Boston. We are really trained to treat it as a purely physical sensation that you can rate on a scale of zero to 10 with specific tools. And it is as much an emotion that one feels as it is a physical sensation. Despite your background, Alex.

Patient-Centered 105

Patient-Centered Physicals IT Patients 105

GeriPal

MARCH 27, 2025

Alex 02:44 Still suffering from some illness from there, which is why I was sick and not in the office with Eric today. So we sent that to everyone 65 and older with upcoming visits, though we were tracking on our side the people who had diagnoses and things. Alex (singing) Alex 02:34 All right, this was a fun one.

Primary Care 79

Primary Care IT Clinic Illness 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. First time on the GeriPal podcast, Liz Lilley, who’s a surgeon and faculty in surgery at the Brigham Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Family 106

Family Families Patient-Centered Patients 106

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary Hospitals are hazardous places for older adults. These hazards include delirium, malnutrition, falls, infections, and hospital associated disability (which about ⅓ of older adults get during a hospital stay). 2020 Hospital at Home-Plus: A Platform of Facility-Based Care. Annals of Int Med.

Hospital 115

Hospital Patient-Centered Supply Chain IT 115

GeriPal

JULY 16, 2024

Eric Widera reminds us of the history of the Goldwater Act created by the American Psychological Association in the 1960s which states that psychiatrists should refrain from diagnosing public figures, and the American Medical Association code of ethics which likewise discourages armchair diagnosis (rule established in 2017).

Diagnosis 141

Diagnosis Diagnose IT Physicals 141