GeriPal

DECEMBER 2, 2022

She directs UCSF MERI’s patient, family, and clinician support with classes and consultation on resiliency, well-being, and grief. You wrote about how when it comes to talking about patients with dementia, they’re rarely portrayed as resilient. Alex: First three words would be, family and history and diversity.

Community 101

Community IT Individual Patient-Centered 101

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

GeriPal

AUGUST 4, 2022

My take home from this is that while the most preferred explanation for deprescribing statins and sedative-hypnotics is one focused on the risk of side effects, we also need to individualize it to the patient and the medication that they are taking. But how to talk to patients about the risk and benefits when starting. Ariel: Sure.

Specialization 104

Specialization Medical Patient-Centered Provider 104

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? I wonder if you could engage their family in the goals of care discussion.”

IT 102

IT Screening Hospital Clinic 102

Mesa Family Physician

MARCH 13, 2025

However, at Mesa Family Physicians , we believe that preventive healthcare is the cornerstone of long-term wellness for our Mesa, Arizona community. Regular visits to your primary care physician at Mesa Family Physicians provide opportunities for early detection of potential health issues before they become serious problems.

Family Physician 100

Family Physician Preventive Care Preventative Care Family 100

GeriPal

JUNE 27, 2024

How, though, do we navigate anxiety and help our patients who may end up in the anxiety spiral that becomes so hard to get out of? I have so many questions, and I promise we’re going to get to the management of anxiety and serious illness. Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Alex Gamble, do you have a song?

Illness 129

Illness IT Diagnosis Patient-Centered 129

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

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

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

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

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

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. So I first want to just say thank you to Ernesto’s family. This is Eric Widera. Alex: This is Alex Smith. Eric: And Alex, who do we have with us today?

Illness 136

Illness IT Patient-Centered Family 136

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 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

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. But the patient would say, well, but it still hurts, though.

Illness 133

Illness Patient-Centered Patients IT 133

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?” Anne Kelly: Hi there. Nice to be here. Lynn: I do.

Family 97

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 97

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

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

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. Our loves, our triumphs, our failures, our work, our families. . Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient. What’s in a story? Bennett, C.R.,

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

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

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. Eric: Yeah. Eric: Yeah.

IT 102

IT Family Families Diagnosis 102

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

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?

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Healthcare 109

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

MARCH 9, 2023

Early data on efficacy in patients with anxiety and demoralization are promising. Two of our guests today, Stacy Fischer and Brian Anderson, are involved in large multicenter trials of psychedelics for patients with advanced cancer (Fischer) or life-limiting illness (Anderson). Research is exploding. You’ve been trained?

Patient-Centered 91

Patient-Centered Community IT Medical 91

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. Young adulthood is super hard.

IT 83

IT Family Families Illness 83

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. What about the burdens, risks, and harms? Heather: Sure.

IT 105

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Illness 105

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.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

GeriPal

AUGUST 11, 2022

We talk with Susan about how far the field has come, from early days when the attending physician would decide which patients were DNR and place a black “no code” dot in the chart. – Serious Illness Conversation Guide podcast. There was no conversation with the patient or the family about this. AlexSmithMD .

Illness 109

Illness IT Family Families 109

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.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

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

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. Other states set lower bars, including oral assignment of surrogate decision-makers. What words to use?

Family 112

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 112

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

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

MARCH 24, 2022

Then listen to these prior podcasts with Sean Morrison and Rebecca Sudore about this issue, and we recently discussed differences between Advance Care Planning and Serious Illness Communication with Juliet Jacobsen and Rachelle Bernacki. . And especially for those who may have nontraditional families. This is Eric Widera.

Illness 72

Illness IT Healthcare Patient-Centered 72

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