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

StorytellERdoc

MARCH 18, 2020

Gone are the carefree smiles, the uncomplicated daily lives, and the thought that we and our families are immune to unexpected death. Friends and family have asked me my thoughts on Covid-19, maybe believing I have some special information simply from being on the front lines. Be patient when you are frustrated.

ER 100

ER Illness Physicals Provider 100

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 performed for many palliative patients, and that’s when I started to understand.

IT 96

IT Patient-Centered Patients Board-Certified 96

GeriPal

JULY 3, 2025

We’ve invited two palliative care doctors to talk about survivorship with us: Laura Petrillo , a physician-researcher at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Laura Shoemaker , an outpatient palliative care doctor at the Cleveland Clinic. I was there and at University Hospitals, had a great visit. Why did this come up?

Patient-Centered 71

Patient-Centered Illness Clinic IT 71

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

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

JUNE 9, 2022

Palliative care, in contrast, saw explosive growth in US hospitals. The National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC)and Palliative Care Research Cooperative (PCRC)were founded in part to meet this need. By diagnosis? But definitely always had the bug to be the one to jump into the family meetings in the ICU, lead them.

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. 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

JULY 11, 2024

It’s a jampacked 50 minutes, filled with pearls on taking care of patients with liver disease. Kirsten 04:16 So, in emergency medicine, obviously, we are interacting and caring for these both exciting and interesting, but also very complex and humbling patients to care for in the ED setting. What’s the connection and why?

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 109

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. Welcome to the GeriPal podcast, Jennifer. Jennifer: Thanks. Welcome to the GeriPal Podcast, Areej. Eric: Yeah.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

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

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

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. I did it before and this guy, he was 85, but he was climbing Mount Everest.”

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IT Family Families Patient-Centered 128

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. Katie, welcome back to GeriPal. And so, let’s help them.

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening Clinic 136

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? The patient is crying in front of you.

IT 99

IT Patient-Centered Patients Healthcare 99

GeriPal

APRIL 14, 2022

Adapting Palliative Care Skills to Provide Substance Use Disorder Treatment to Patients With Serious Illness . And I remember being there and there was a patient who had seen inpatient and then subsequently outpatient who was so thankful in the weirdest in just this irrational way for having been diagnosed with liver cancer.

Illness 102

Illness Patient-Centered IT Patients 102

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

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. In one room the physician under study interacts with a white patient-actor, and in another room interacts with a Black patient-actor.

Patient-Centered 111

Patient-Centered Patients IT Healthcare 111

GeriPal

MAY 9, 2024

Matt Tyler (aka Pallidad for those on Twitter ): Matt is the Hospice and Palliative care doctor who created How To Train Your Doctor , which helps patients living with serious illness find tips on “owning” their healthcare plan on his Instagram and YouTube pages. He was also the one who we have to thank for suggesting this podcast!

Education 127

Education IT Illness Healthcare 127

GeriPal

DECEMBER 19, 2024

A NY Times article titled Should Patients Be Allowed to Die From Anorexia ? This is a unique opportunity to join UCSFs vibrant and renowned faculty, teach and mentor future doctors, and make a lasting impact at one of the nations leading safety-net hospitals. We don’t have a way of operationalizing which patients qualify.

Illness 101

Illness Mental Health IT Patient-Centered 101

BMJ

MAY 10, 2022

Family physicians and family health workers, considered reliable sources of vaccine information, have a unique position where individuals in rural and urban areas can access frequently, uninterruptedly, cheaply, and easily [2]. COVID-19 diagnosis of self Yes 24 (44.4) COVID-19 diagnosis of a relative Yes 98 (46.4)

Vaccination 40

Vaccination Healthcare Professional Healthcare Primary Care 40

GeriPal

MAY 12, 2022

I mean, just such struggles around corruption in hospitals, access to opioid pain medication, and you almost had to wait until a friend of yours was in power, so you could have access, get permission. It’s easier to concentrate on cure, diagnosis, cure. People who are suffering are not very visible. They shared their experiences.

Community 115

Community IT Relationship Healthcare 115

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. Alex: And we’re delighted to welcome Sonu Gaind, who is a Chief of psychiatry and professor at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center at the University of Toronto.

Illness 144

Illness IT Medical Provider 144

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

Give too much, it may cause harm (even if the higher dose had no significant side effects, it would require patients to take a lot of unnecessary additional pills as well as increase the cost.) So, what is the effective dose of palliative care? Give too little – it may not work. Jennifer, welcome back to the GeriPal podcast.

Patient-Centered 119

Patient-Centered IT Patients Hospital 119

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. And then when you see clinically patients coming into hospital, they’ll have, you know, they’ll be admitted for aspiration pneumonia.

Illness 93

Illness Hospital IT Patient-Centered 93

GeriPal

JULY 6, 2023

Administration on Aging connecting you to services for older adults and their families California’s Master Plan for Aging New York’s Master Plan for Aging Transcript Eric: Welcome to the GeriPal Podcast. To learn more about what we talked about, check out the following links: Eldercare Locator, a public service of the U.S. Eric: Yeah.

Community 89

Community Nurse Practitioner Provider IT 89

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

FEBRUARY 24, 2022

Alex: And we’re delighted to welcome back, a frequent guest to our podcast, Rachelle Bernacki, who’s a palliative care physician and geriatrician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. We see our patients and our families throughout the illness trajectory into the hospital.

Illness 98

Illness Patient-Centered IT Family 98

GeriPal

MARCH 27, 2025

Only 5% of intervention patients received the facilitator-led component of the intervention (there were other components, facilitator-led was the most engaged component). And so this is our way of supporting non English speaking families in advanced care planning. I’m hearing dementia patients or patients with dementia.

Primary Care 79

Primary Care IT Clinic Illness 79

GeriPal

APRIL 21, 2022

Poetry puts us in our patient’s shoes. Poetry holds us in that liminal space so many of our patients are in. Mike Rabow shares his award winning poem about coming out to the world about his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. . Alex: We also have Mike Rabow, who is director of palliative care at the Cancer Center at UCSF.

Patient-Centered 93

Patient-Centered IT Community Illness 93

GeriPal

AUGUST 22, 2024

I love these topics, too, because even how do we define what is a diagnosis? Knowing I was interested in neurology and had opportunities to observe brain death determination in the hospital. Patients families want to know whether their loved one has died. Doctors want to know whether the patient has died.

IT 113

IT Family Families Patient-Centered 113

GeriPal

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Don’t get me wrong, the evidence points to cost savings, but as Chris Callahan and Kathleen Unroe pointed out in a JAGS editorial in 2020 “in comprehensive dementia care models, savings may accrue to Medicare, but the expenses accrue to a fluid and unstable network of local service providers, patients, and their families.”

Patient-Centered 125

Patient-Centered IT Family Families 125

Physician's Weekly

JUNE 11, 2025

Losing Memory, and Other Things, Too Kennedy’s diagnosis led him to retire, ending a decades-long career as a software engineer at the University of Scranton. He recommends memory cafes to other people with dementia and their families. Socializing can also become more difficult after diagnosis. I get to meet them.

Patients 52

Patients Family Families Diagnosis 52

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

JANUARY 5, 2023

We start by talking with Robert Brody, an internist who recalls physicians helping patients die during the height of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. Robert was first asked by one of his own patients for assistance in dying in 1991, far before aid in dying was legalized in California in 2016. Lisa Harris piece mentioned on podcast.

Provider 19

Provider Medical Hospital Patient-Centered 19

GeriPal

JULY 14, 2022

Two-thirds of the patients in the home now have COVID-19. Seventeen of your patients are dead. The other physicians who previously saw patients in the nursing home are no longer coming to your facility because you have COVID positive patients. You’re short on gowns and facemasks. Did I summarize that right, Darrell?

Nurse Practitioner 136

Nurse Practitioner Patient-Centered Vaccination Emergency Room 136