GeriPal

JUNE 8, 2023

Should we use Ozempic (if we can find it) in patients with serious illness, which often results in undesirable and profound weight loss? So my background clinically is working with cancer patients and families and those who underwent bone marrow transplant, and a lot of times for their treatment regimen, it includes steroids.

Diabetes 73

Diabetes Management Patient-Centered Family 73

Mesa Family Physician

JUNE 24, 2025

The Role of Internal Medicine in Preventive Health Care Internal medicine plays a central role in adult health, especially when it comes to prevention, diagnosis, and long-term care. Internal medicine is a medical specialty focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases in adults.

Internal Medicine 130

Internal Medicine GP Family Doctor Primary Care 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 Nurse Practitioner 102

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 Clinic 136

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

Eric 00:27 So we’re going to be talking about making the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in a primary care setting, not specialty care, but maybe we could talk a little bit about that. How much should it change how we think about making a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in primary care? Great to be back. Absolutely.

Primary Care 95

Primary Care Diagnosis Screening IT 95

Mesa Family Physician

MAY 8, 2025

These visits help catch illnesses before they become more serious, reduce healthcare costs in the long term, and improve overall quality of life. Why Preventive Health Maintenance Matters The importance of public health and individual wellness cannot be overstated. The goal is to avoid disease, not just treat it.

Preventive Care 100

Preventive Care Preventative Care Wellness Visit Physicals 100

GeriPal

AUGUST 31, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary How do people react when they hear they have a serious illness? And some people, in addition or instead, engage in deep introspection on how to make meaning or live with or understand this experience of serious illness. Shock, “like a car is rushing straight at me” (says Bill Gardner on our podcast).

Illness 128

Illness IT Diagnose Medical 128

GeriPal

AUGUST 29, 2024

Summary Transcript CME Summary Serious illness communication is hard. We must often deliver complex medical information that carries heavy emotional weight in pressured settings to individuals with varying cultural backgrounds, values, and beliefs. Eric 01:42 So we’ ve got an exciting topic today.

IT 132

IT Illness Family Families 132

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. To note that I am an individual who goes through this world. I face a lot of different stressors and challenges similar to other individuals, but I also have my own unique experiences. Noelle Marie 01:15 I do.

Individual 85

Individual Community IT Chronic Condition 85

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

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

The patient is sick and getting sicker, and refuses to let you talk with family or other members of her inner circle. We owe it to the patient to explore the reasons behind the “no,” commonly not wanting to be a burden to their family. Should you stop at “no?” AlexSmithMD Transcript Eric: Welcome to the GeriPal podcast.

Family 97

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 97

GeriPal

JULY 21, 2022

Often the work of the certified driving rehab specialist is to assess the older drivers goals, assess prognosis for driving, and help the family navigate discussions around driving cessation (hmmm…sounds like an approach to family meetings). Love to talk about also in the serious illness population. Alex: Yeah. Eric: Yeah.

Family 102

Family Families IT Diagnosis 102

GeriPal

JUNE 9, 2022

By diagnosis? 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. 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

MAY 4, 2023

There’s all this stuff that we’re supposed to be doing at that stage of life and then you add the complexity of the serious illness. It is really difficult for the patients and the families. Young adulthood is super hard. Daniel, does that play a role as far as… I have a 14-year-old son. Thoughts on that?

IT 83

IT Family Families Illness 83

GeriPal

JULY 28, 2022

GeriPal post on “fast food” style palliative care in chronic critical illness. This is my early father’s day gift from the family. But at that time I was struck by how in that field, there wasn’t a focus or really interest in symptom management and support for patients and their families. Transcript. Eric: Yeah.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

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. Summary Transcript CME Summary It is a battle royale on this weeks GeriPal podcast. But watch out!

Telehealth 105

Telehealth Patient-Centered IT Patients 105

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. And so when you have that, that’s so good for the family. That’s so good for us.

IT 102

IT Family Families Clinic 102

GeriPal

JUNE 30, 2022

Eric: So we’re going to be talking about dementia and considerations around surgery for individuals with dementia. And then, the family, her kids got together, my wife and her brother and sister got together and said, wait a minute, mom did not want this, right? Welcome to the GeriPal podcast, Samir. Samir: Thanks, Alex and Eric.

Patient-Centered 101

Patient-Centered Complication Patients IT 101

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. Sammy: Thank you so much.

Education 127

Education IT Illness Healthcare 127

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Not the most common circumstances that people with serious illness face where attention and understanding of what my goals and values are. Eric: I do not want my family to listen to my podcasts. So, I generally don’t listen to the podcast afterwards, nor force them on my family. ” Very specific, rare circumstance.

IT 126

IT Patient-Centered Illness Education 126

PEMBlog

MARCH 27, 2024

Consider it a supplement to what you remember from Biochemistry and the instructions on the family’s laminated care plan sheet. Inborn errors of metabolism in infancy: a guide to diagnosis. Meaning that an individual must inherit two copies of the mutation, so one from each of his or her parents, to be affected.

Consulting 59

Consulting Individual Family Families 59

GeriPal

MARCH 7, 2024

We’ve invited two death doulas, Jane Euler and John Loughnane (who is also a family doc and palliative care physician), to talk about the role of a doula at the end of life. He looked very ill. John: I am what I am, which is a family practice doctor. I’m unsure what they do, how often they’re used, and who pays for their work.

Provider 117

Provider Illness IT Healthcare 117

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. But that was separate from MAID.

Illness 144

Illness IT Medical Provider 144

GeriPal

JUNE 22, 2023

But now we have older people dying of older people illnesses. Alex: And are the regulations similar or different in terms of six month required prognosis or less, should the disease take its usual course, or illnesses leading to a short prognosis? In many cases, the families were the victims of the crime. Eric: Mm-hmm.

Family 132

Family Families IT Community 132

GeriPal

JULY 11, 2024

We get a bit of, in the veteran population, kind of a mix of a lot of mental health issues thrown into these comorbid illnesses, including cirrhosis, but it’s usually the decompensated cirrhotics or the folks with liver cancer and cirrhosis, or one of both. And it’s usually those people that I’m seeing.

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 109

GeriPal

AUGUST 25, 2022

Second, Hospice was originally designed for patients with advanced cancer, but the fastest growing admitting diagnosis is dementia. 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.

Family 106

Family Families IT Patients 106

GeriPal

OCTOBER 19, 2023

And we have Scott Halpern, who is Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and Director of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center or Payer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Alex: National POLST Collaborative. Good to know. And he’s a professional Uber driver for his daughter’s softball games.[laughter]

Patient-Centered 126

Patient-Centered IT Patients Illness 126

GeriPal

MAY 12, 2022

It’s easier to concentrate on cure, diagnosis, cure. When we think about palliative care delivered here, like individuals with chronic pain, non-serious illness chronic pain, non-life threatening illness, oftentimes if we get consulted on them, we don’t even see them, may just be discontinued in most palliative care places.

Community 115

Community IT Relationship Healthcare 115

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. So we did a perfect cross so that the race and actual primary diagnosis was perfectly matched across groups. There’s that recognition piece.

Patient-Centered 111

Patient-Centered Patients IT Healthcare 111

Annals of Family Medicine

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

Context: Older adults with severe mental illness (SMI) who develop dementia are a particularly complex and understudied population with various healthcare needs. Objective: To describe individual characteristics and healthcare use in older adults with SMI across home care services (HCS) profiles before and after the first dementia diagnosis.

Diagnosis 130

Diagnosis Healthcare Illness Primary Care 130

GeriPal

OCTOBER 27, 2022

James: Yeah, so I guess just to start… I mean, prognosis in general is kind of a term for predicted course of disease, and I think people commonly use it to refer to an individual’s life expectancy or how long the person has to live. I think this is a really difficult topic to talk about with patients.

IT 95

IT Clinic Screening Patients 95

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Holly has accumulated mountains of evidence for the diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder as a specific condition primarily notable for a yearning over a year after the death. Alex: Their own death in advance, terminally ill people. They don’t want to interact with their family. This led her on a remarkable journey.

IT 100

IT Relationship Complication Specialization 100

GeriPal

JUNE 26, 2025

I think part of this does stem from a clinical experience and also some of the theoretical models that have evolved around serious illness, you know, to think specifically about dementia. And so trying to think a little bit more about what could be driving some of those alterations in the trajectory for all kinds of serious illness.

Illness 93

Illness Hospital IT Patient-Centered 93

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.

Family 106

Family Families Patient-Centered Patients 106

Vida Family Medicine

MARCH 1, 2023

Factors such as a history of trauma (abuse, neglect, sexual assault, attachment trauma, etc), life stressors including serious physical or mental illness, and social influences that portray thinness as an ideal and promote dieting combine with an underlying genetic predisposition to contribute to development of an eating disorder.

Mental Health 52

Mental Health Physicals Family Medicine DO 52

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

Alex 12:36 And most of our listeners are like clinician, practicing clinicians caring for older adults, people with serious illness. Within eight weeks of diagnosis of advanced disease. So in chronically critically ill patients, the idea that one visit is going to do anything is just. Is this superior to that? Palliative care.

Patient-Centered 119

Patient-Centered IT Patients Hospital 119

GeriPal

MARCH 27, 2025

And so this is our way of supporting non English speaking families in advanced care planning. Alex 02:44 Still suffering from some illness from there, which is why I was sick and not in the office with Eric today. And I have a long interest in identifying family caregivers and supporting them in care delivery. Eric 06:26 Great.

Primary Care 79

Primary Care IT Clinic Illness 79