The Clinical Problem Solvers

APRIL 24, 2025

Her mission — preparing the next generation of diverse physician leaders in pediatric healthcare and mental health and creating partnerships between communities and academic centers — will be critical for eliminating disparities among minority populations. A Culturally Informed Approach to Supporting Suicidal Minoritized Patients.

Mental Health 52

Mental Health Community Hospital Appointment 52

GeriPal

JULY 19, 2024

Joseph Gaugler is the Director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation at the University of Minnesota, director of the BOLD Public Health Center of Excellence on Dementia Caregiving, and Editor-in-Chief of the Gerontologist. Who should get it if anyone? What should we use to screen individuals? Is that right, Soo? Joe 01:15 Yes.

Screening 119

Screening Primary Care Patient-Centered IT 119

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. Welcome, Ariel.

Specialization 104

Specialization Medical Patient-Centered Provider 104

GeriPal

APRIL 27, 2023

The company has expanded its palliative care services through partnerships with hospitals and other managed care providers, according to AccentCare CEO Stephan Rodgers. Attendee 11: I am hopeful that the model of care that we deliver is what our patients and their caregivers want, need and deserve. Attendee 18: The science.

Specialization 93

Specialization Illness Healthcare Patient-Centered 93

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 Families 73

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

JULY 27, 2023

Alex: And we have Cathy Alessi, who is a geriatrician, Director of the Geriatrics Research Education and Clinical Care Center at the VA, greater Los Angeles and Professor of Medicine at UCLA. So often patients or their caregivers, to be honest with you, are asking for a simple solution. Welcome to the GeriPal podcast, Brienne.

Illness 85

Illness IT Medical Clinic 85

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

JANUARY 25, 2024

He also found gaps, including very few studies of patients with lung disease, and little impact of trials on quality of life. Your research is a lot in this patient population, right? With their regular providers? The article we discuss today, also published in JAMA , addresses these two gaps. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™.

Patient-Centered 122

Patient-Centered IT Illness Patients 122

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.

Families 97

Families Family Patient-Centered IT 97

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

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. . My Life, My Story: VA’s healthcare improvements through deliberate storytelling – YouTube.

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

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?

Families 144

Families Family Patient-Centered IT 144

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. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™.

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 109

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Does it improve outcomes that patients, caregivers, and clinicians care about? hint: 80% can be done in advance by patients or caregivers) Why is it that some oncologists are resistant to conducting a geriatric assessment, yet have no problem ordering tests that cost thousands of dollars? Alex: How is your family doing?

Patient-Centered 129

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 129

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

The insight started when Carmen, an orthopedic surgeon-researcher, and Katie, a physical therapist- researcher participated in ride-alongs with EMS providers to patient’s homes. Going into patient’s homes was eye opening. And yet, after assisting the older adult to their feet, the EMS providers would leave.

Community 114

Community Transportation IT PCP 114

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

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. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™.

Mental Health 122

Mental Health Patient-Centered Illness Screening 122

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. Heather: Sure.

IT 105

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Illness 105

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

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?

Families 112

Families Family Patient-Centered IT 112

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. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™. Katie, welcome back to GeriPal.

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening IT 136

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. Welcome back to GeriPal, Stacy.

Patient-Centered 91

Patient-Centered Community IT Medical 91

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 8, 2024

Accreditation In support of improving patient care, UCSF Office of CME is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

IT 137

IT Families Family Physicals 137

GeriPal

MARCH 2, 2023

The FDA-approved indications for gabapentin are only for treating patients with partial seizures or postherpetic neuralgia. valproic acid and gabapentin), in nursing homes, particularly patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. There are a lot of reasons that may explain the massive increase in use of these drugs.

Patient-Centered 96

Patient-Centered IT Healthcare Medical 96

GeriPal

JUNE 19, 2025

And I think a big part of that journey was just having that right time, that right moment, with the right network and support groups of individuals, including my family, to really lift me up and allow me to celebrate my authentic self. – Rainbows of Aging : Jace Flatt’s research site. And also of note, Eric and Alex.

Individual 85

Individual Community IT Chronic Condition 85

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

If the purpose of initiating dialysis is improving function – our complex, frail, older patients are likely to be disappointed. Are we seeing people like more older adults, more nursing home patients starting dialysis, and even at a higher gfr? So I wonder if I could turn to either of our nephrologists.

Management 116

Management Patient-Centered Patients IT 116

GeriPal

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Summary Transcript CME Summary Falls are very common among older adults but often go unreported or untreated by healthcare providers. Patients may feel like falls are just part of normal aging. Providers may feel a sense of nihilism, that there just isn’t anything they can do to decrease the risk of falling.

IT 124

IT Screening Patient-Centered Community 124

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

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. Clinicians were randomized to 4 groups: Usual care Prognosis nudge – EHR prompt asking, do you think your patient will be alive in 6 months?

Patient-Centered 116

Patient-Centered Hospital IT Illness 116

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.”

IT 128

IT Families Family Patient-Centered 128

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

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

We are going to tackle this question and so many more about coping on this week’s podcast with Dani Chammas , a recurring GeriPal guest, psychiatrist, and palliative care doc at UCSF, and Amanda Moment , a Palliative Care Social Worker at Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center. Coping is something that we see our patients do.

Illness 125

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 125

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

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

I must admit, though, sometimes it just feels off… inauthentic, as if it’s not a genuine desire to improve our lives as health care providers, but rather a metric to check off or a desire to improve productivity and billing by making the plight of workers a little less miserable. If you were just. If you could make it, if we.

IT 110

IT Healthcare Healthcare Professional Patient-Centered 110

GeriPal

DECEMBER 14, 2023

More recently Sharon Kaufman ‘s book And a Time to Die described the ways in which physicians, nurses, hospital systems, and payment mechanisms influenced the hour and manner of patient’s deaths. We discuss the moral distress that clinicians felt including, as one physician put it, a sense of your soul being ripped out.

Hospital 125

Hospital IT Patient-Centered Patients 125