Mesa Family Physician

MARCH 13, 2025

Arizona’s climate and lifestyle present specific health considerations that our Mesa-based medical professionals are specially trained to address. Our team at Mesa Family Physicians specializes in geriatric medicine, addressing the complex health needs that can arise with aging.

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Family Physician Preventative Care Preventive Care Families 100

GeriPal

MAY 8, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary Weve covered psychedelics on the podcast beforefirst in 2019 with Ira Byock, where we explored their potential role in medicine , and then again in 2023 with Stacy Fischer, Brian Anderson, and Theora Cimino, focusing on the reasons to approach psychedelic use in patients with caution. This is Eric Widera.

Illness 107

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 107

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 . We got some really special guests with us. But does this drug really live up to the hype?

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Illness Patient-Centered IT Patients 102

Plum Health

OCTOBER 11, 2024

These services go beyond treating illnesses; they aim to keep you healthy in the first place. Your ongoing appointments help foster a strong patient-doctor relationship , making it easier to discuss your concerns and receive personalized care. Non-life-threatening illnesses often demand quick relief options. What is in a clinic?

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Clinic Primary Care Doctor Primary Care Chronic Condition 52

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

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).

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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. Alex 03:31 That was fun.

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Illness Patient-Centered Patients IT 133

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.

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Patient-Centered IT Illness Patients 122

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.

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IT Illness Families Family 132

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.

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Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

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

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.

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IT Patient-Centered Patients Board-Certified 97

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 . Transcript.

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Illness IT Families Family 109

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 29, 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.

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IT Patient-Centered Illness Education 126

GeriPal

JUNE 9, 2022

We talk with Kate about how despite how far we’ve come in palliative care research, we still don’t have answers to some fundamental questions, such as: Who should get specialized palliative care? We can’t possibly meet the needs of all people with newly diagnosed serious illness. Patients have all sorts of problems.

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Consulting Patient-Centered Diagnosis Referral 99

GeriPal

JULY 11, 2024

It’s a jampacked 50 minutes, filled with pearls on taking care of patients with liver disease. And, you know, I just thought it was a really special song. Kirsten 04:52 So we did a pilot study and of nine patients, and now we’re in the process of doing an RCT of 200. Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose.

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Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 109

GeriPal

MAY 9, 2024

all of whom focus their efforts on educating the general public about living and dying with a serious illness. And one of the most common things that I would hear from patients, family caregivers would be I’d ask them at the end of the encounter, “What questions do you have?”

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Education IT Illness Healthcare 127

GeriPal

APRIL 4, 2024

Arguing for the state of Missouri against the Cruzan’s was Ken Starr, who would later be assigned the role of special prosecutor in the investigation of the Clintons (Whitewater, Lewensky, etc). The hospital refused without a court order, and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. What words to use? Is the POLST useful?

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Families Family Patient-Centered IT 112

GeriPal

AUGUST 25, 2022

Second, Hospice was originally designed for patients with advanced cancer, but the fastest growing admitting diagnosis is dementia. Krista Harrison found , to her surprise, that caregivers of people with dementia who died rated hospice as well as similar patients without dementia who died on hospice. AlexSmithMD. Transcript.

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Families Family IT Patients 106

GeriPal

MARCH 28, 2024

What we did was ask clinicians earlier in the ICU stay for very sick patients to document prognosis, and for those who they thought would survive, to document six-month functional prognosis. Eric: And who are the patients including in this trial, again? Kate: These are very sick patients. And that’s it. Kate: Sure.

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Consulting Patient-Centered IT Patients 115

GeriPal

MARCH 13, 2025

Yes, it means to cloak, but theres more Whole-person-care Total pain Healing as a process distinct from the deterioration of the body Sympomatologists The patient and family as the unit of care Our guests referenced many articles on this podcast, linked above and below. by Kearney. I promise its short. Well, I guess just over 20 years ago.

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IT Patient-Centered Families Family 104

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

And Bill Andereck is still haunted by the decision he made to have the police break down the door to rescue his patient who attempted suicide in the 1980s, as detailed in this essay in the Cambridge Quarterly of HealthCare Ethics. The patient case. So while you don’t have to, we’re gonna summarize these articles.

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Patients IT Patient-Centered Hospital 98

GeriPal

APRIL 28, 2022

Eric: I’m looking forward to talking about art and humor in palliative care and we’re caring for seriously ill patients. If you look back to some of my cartoons from late in residency, they showed just how dehumanized I felt and definitely give windows into how dehumanized I imagined my patients to be. Nathan: I do.

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IT Hospital Patients Illness 145

GeriPal

MARCH 24, 2023

I’m very proud of the work that we do every day and we take care of patients and families no matter where they live or who they are to help them meet their end of life goals. I am passionately against bad care and there is a lot of bad hospice care that preys on highly vulnerable patients and is unnecessary. Eric: Great.

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IT Provider Patients Families 114

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. We’re just like, “Okay, I see this patient has a need. Okay, I see this team member has a need.

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IT Families Family Clinic 102

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

The illness narratives suffering, healing, and the human condition. I think even the word patient, patient, I think, comes from the word suffer, the one who suffers. I’ve had a patient in one room, they have stage four breast cancer. Hospital Chaplains, Spirituality, and Pain Management: A Qualitative Study.

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IT Families Family Physicals 137

GeriPal

APRIL 10, 2025

I asked emergency medicine clinicians what they thought when a patient who is seriously ill and DNR comes to the ED, and some responded, (paraphrasing), what are they doing here? Most emergency providers wanted to do the right thing for seriously ill patients, but they didnt have the knowledge, skills, or experience to do it.

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Patient-Centered IT Hospital Patients 77

GeriPal

MAY 25, 2023

And, you know, I really leaned in from my perspective as a primary care geriatrician to hearing from what my patients and their family caregivers are asking me for and asking me about, and they’re asking me about how they can prepare. Hillary: I certainly agree lots to think about. And that’s also kind of where I leaned in.

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Community IT Patient-Centered Primary Care 96

GeriPal

JUNE 5, 2025

nursing homes grapple with serious illnesses, and roughly half experience dementia. Despite these substantial needs, specialized palliative care beyond hospice is rare in nursing homes. How to think about primary and specialized palliative care in this setting. Consider this: the majority of the 1.4 Thank you so much.

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Nurse Practitioner Referral Consulting Board-Certified 78

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 20, 2025

If you want a deeper dive, check out the following resources: Our Nature of Suffering podcast with BJ Miller and Naomi Saks Dani Chammas Annals paper on countertransference and why we shouldnt say that the patient was difficult rather than that I felt frustrated. Which may not be necessarily traumatizing.

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Patient-Centered IT Individual Screening 67

GeriPal

DECEMBER 5, 2024

We talked with Thor Ringler, who helped found the My Life My Story Project at the VA and beyond, and Heather Coats about the evidence base for capturing patient stories. So has a special resonance for, I think, a lot of people who are Tragically H ip fans. Because we all interface with it at the end of the day as patients.

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IT Community Patients Families 107

GeriPal

APRIL 6, 2023

Today we have a star-studded lineup, including Lexy Torke of Indiana University, who discusses her RCT of a chaplaincy intervention for surrogates of patients in the ICU , published in JPSM and plenary presentation at AAHPM/HPNA. These studies are important. So, learn as many as you can and what they’re all about.

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IT Patient-Centered Families Family 99

GeriPal

MARCH 31, 2022

Patient Poets: Illness from the Inside Out. I think it’s titled Patient Poets Illness. Marilyn: Patient Poets: Illness From Inside Out. Alex: Patient Poets: Illness From Inside Out. I said, write three sentences about an encounter with the patient. AlexSmithMD. ” I love that.

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IT Patients Medical Illness 70

GeriPal

MARCH 20, 2025

Recently, discussion has emerged about how these issues intertwine in caring for patients with advancing dementia who have stated that they would not want to continue living in that condition: for those with an advanced directive to stop eating and drinking, how do we balance caring for their rational past self and their experiential current self?

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IT Patient-Centered Patients Medical 88

GeriPal

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

And also it’s a little bit of an insult to one’s identity to feel like if this special person in your life can be forgotten, then you can be forgotten. But our living memory home is a way to both maintain that connection, because that’s the fear is that you’re going to lose this connection to this very special person.

IT 100

IT Complication Relationship Specialization 100

GeriPal

JUNE 6, 2024

Summary Transcript Summary As Eric notes at the end of today’s podcast, we talk about many difficult issues with our patients. But one issue we’re not as good at discussing with our patients is sexual health. Clearly this issue is important to patients. How long they might have to live. Their declining cognitive abilities.

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Illness IT Physicals Patients 130

GeriPal

MARCH 16, 2023

We have two authors, books, op-eds, prolific authors, and today’s podcast is a two-part special. So this week we’re going to be talking about writing for the lay public, and next week we’ll be publishing a podcast on writing for healthcare providers. Rosanne, I’ll start with you.

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