PEMBlog

OCTOBER 2, 2024

I’ll make the important distinction between gastritis – which is diagnosed only via endoscopy – and dyspepsia, the term best used to describe the symptoms many patients experience. Gastroesophageal reflux disease is when the patients have severe symptoms that persist and cause long term issues.

Diagnosis 52

Diagnosis Management IT Patient-Centered 52

GeriPal

JUNE 12, 2025

Summary Transcript CME Summary If you’re anything like me, you might find the process of what happens to patients when they visit a radiation oncologist somewhat mysterious. Eric 00:42 So on this podcast, we’re gonna be talking about what every healthcare provider should know about radiation oncology. Evie, welcome to GeriPal.

Patient-Centered 102

Patient-Centered Referral Patients IT 102

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? Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guests Alex Gamble and Brianna Williamson have no relationships to disclose. Eric 00:43 All right, so we’ ve got a lot to cover on this topic.

Illness 129

Illness IT Diagnosis Patient-Centered 129

Plum Health

OCTOBER 11, 2024

They also provide immunizations and lifestyle advice tailored to your specific needs. 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.

Clinic 52

Clinic Primary Care Doctor Primary Care Chronic Condition 52

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

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) ™. Who do we have with us today?

Illness 136

Illness Patient-Centered Screening Clinic 136

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 in the setting of serious illness.

Illness 125

Illness IT Patient-Centered Patients 125

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

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 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

JUNE 13, 2024

Summary Transcript Summary I always find cachexia in serious illness puzzling. I feel like I recognize it when I see it, but I struggle to give a clear definition or provide effective ways to address it. Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guest Eduardo Bruera has no relationships to disclose.

Illness 133

Illness Patient-Centered Patients IT 133

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. Sunita: Honestly, I’d be happy to provide the vocals. Take for example the simple question: “If her breathing gets any worse, she will need to be intubated.”

Illness 136

Illness IT Patient-Centered Family 136

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

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. Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient. A few data based publication links from Person-Centered Narrative Intervention Program of Research: .

Patient-Centered 115

Patient-Centered Illness Healthcare IT 115

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

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. Rather, most of us live and make decisions in relationship to one another.

Family 98

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 98

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.

IT 105

IT Patient-Centered Healthcare Illness 105

GeriPal

JULY 28, 2022

GeriPal post on “fast food” style palliative care in chronic critical illness. 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. Additional links: Editorial on Areej’s study. Palliative care in lung and GI cancers.

Illness 110

Illness Hospital Patient-Centered Patients 110

GeriPal

JULY 11, 2024

It’s a jampacked 50 minutes, filled with pearls on taking care of patients with liver disease. Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guests Kirsten Engel, Sarah Gillespie-Heyman, Brittany Waterman, & Amy Johnson have no relationships to disclose. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™. And that piqued my interest.

Patient-Centered 109

Patient-Centered IT Patients Clinic 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 97

IT Patient-Centered Patients Board-Certified 97

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

Today we talk with experts Janet Ho, Sach Kale, and Julie Childers about opioid use disorder and serious illness. We address: Why is caring for patients with this overlap so hard? Sach Kale set up an outpatient clinic focused on substance use disorder for patients with cancer. What is making this hard for me? What do they do?

Patients 73

Patients Clinic Patient-Centered Illness 73

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guest hosts Lynn Flint and Anne Kelly have no relationships to disclose. Not the most common circumstances that people with serious illness face where attention and understanding of what my goals and values are. AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s) ™. Alex: Okay.

IT 126

IT Patient-Centered Illness Education 126

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

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

JUNE 19, 2025

Eric 01:04 So we’re going to be talking about transgender health in older adults and those with serious illness. Knowing that the community is really underrepresented in sort of our knowledge, what we do, how we provide care that’s truly inclusive and welcoming. – Rainbows of Aging : Jace Flatt’s research site.

Individual 82

Individual Community IT Chronic Condition 82

GeriPal

MAY 9, 2024

all of whom focus their efforts on educating the general public about living and dying with a serious illness. Why focus on the public rather than other health care providers? Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guests Matt Tyler, Sammy Winemaker and Hsien Seow have no relationships to disclose.

Education 127

Education IT Illness Healthcare 127

GeriPal

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

The illness narratives suffering, healing, and the human condition. Panelists BJ Miller and Naomi Saks have no relationships to disclose. I think even the word patient, patient, I think, comes from the word suffer, the one who suffers. Hospital Chaplains, Spirituality, and Pain Management: A Qualitative Study.

IT 137

IT Family Families Physicals 137

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. A planned expansion of MAID to include people with mental illness was placed on hold until March 2024. They could have a prognosis of years, or decades. Alex: Thank you.

Illness 144

Illness IT Medical Provider 144

GeriPal

MARCH 7, 2024

We are delighted to welcome Jane Euler, who is lead doula and co-founder of Present for You, which is a benefit LLC company that provides doula support at the end-of-life. He looked very ill. We are doulas for those with serious illness and those at end-of-life, just a longitudinal relationship, nonmedical support to provide presence.

Provider 117

Provider Illness IT Healthcare 117

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. Widera and Smith have no relationships to disclose. Guest Laurie Dornbrand has no relationships to disclose.

Family 112

Family Families Patient-Centered IT 112

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.

Illness 109

Illness IT Family Families 109

GeriPal

APRIL 24, 2025

We and our guests have noticed that in our clinical practices, patients and caregivers seem to be asking for such treatments more frequently. If its potentially unsafe, but has robust evidence, well thats most of the treatments we offer seriously ill patients! Think chemotherapy to imminently dying patients, or CPR.

Patient-Centered 77

Patient-Centered IT Patients Illness 77

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.

Patient-Centered 77

Patient-Centered IT Hospital Patients 77

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

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. I loved the relationship that we developed and the fun we had.

IT 104

IT Patient-Centered Family Families 104

GeriPal

APRIL 13, 2023

Summary Transcript Summary Social connections impact our health in profound ways, whether it is the support we receive from family and friends in navigating serious illness, the joy from shared social activities, or connecting with our community. But, should we as clinicians care about the social lives of our patients?

IT 99

IT Community Patient-Centered Medical 99

GeriPal

MARCH 6, 2025

link] PEACH Good Wishes Program A program that provides meaningful gifts for unhoused individuals who are terminally ill. So we’re going to be today talking about serious illness palliative care in the homelessness population. those experiencing homelessness). Really looking forward to the conversation.

Healthcare 100

Healthcare IT Community Illness 100