GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
905 FOLLOWERS
A podcast hosted by Eric Widera and Alex Smith. They invite the brightest minds in geriatrics, hospice, and palliative care to talk about the topics that you care most about, ranging from recently published research in the field to controversies that keep us up at night.
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
2w ago
Today we celebrate eight years, around 2 million listens, and 300 podcasts!
Eric and I take questions from you, our listeners, about: why we podcast, our most controversial podcast, which podcast changed our practice, favorite song request, should all nursing home residents complete the POLST, expanding access to durable medical equipment, palliative care in rural regions, do we have an advance directive, what we’d do to improve healthcare with 7 trillion dollars, treatment for poor appetite, and Eric on how to make a latte. Thank you to Lynn Flint and Anne Kelly who serve a ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
3w ago
In our podcast with palliative care pioneer Susan Block, she identified the psychological/psychiatric aspects of palliative care as the biggest are of need for improvement. 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. That rings true to me.
Today we talk with two psychologists who are deeply invested in addressing psychological aspects of care for people living with serious illness. Elissa Kozlov, a geropsychologist and director of a new population aging MPH at Rutgers, surveyed ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
1M ago
We've talked about Falls a couple of times on this podcast, most recently with Tom Gill about the STRIDE study and before that with Sarah Szanton about the CAPABLE study. A takeaway from those podcasts is that fresh innovative thinking in the falls prevention space is welcome.
Today we talk with the twin sister power duo of Carmen Quatman and Katie Quatman-Yates about an intervention that is both brilliant and (in retrospect) should have been obvious. The insight started when Carmen, an orthopedic surgeon-researcher, and Katie, a physical therapist- researcher participated in ride ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
1M ago
In 1982 Eric Cassell published his landmark essay: On the Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. Though his narrow definition of suffering as injured or threatened personhood has been critiqued, the central concept was a motivating force for many of us to enter the fields of geriatrics and palliative care, Eric and I included.
Today we talk about suffering in the many forms we encounter in palliative care. Our guests are BJ Miller, palliative care physician and c-founder of Mettle Health, and Naomi Saks, chaplain at UCSF.
We discuss:
How to respond when a nurse or t ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
1M ago
Last week we talked about a trial of a nurse and social worker outpatient palliative care intervention published in JAMA. This week, we talk about the other major palliative care trial of default palliative care consults for hospitalized older adults with COPD, kidney disease, or dementia, published in the same issue of JAMA. (See also our accompanying editorial, first author Ashwin Kotwal who joins today as a co-host, and a podcast I recorded with JAMA editor Preeti Malani). For context, listen to the prior podcast with Scott on “nudges” and prior podcast with Kate on who should get pal ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
1M ago
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. The article we discuss today, also published in JAMA, addresses these two gaps.
David Bekelman conducted a RCT of a nurse and social worker telephone intervention (ADAPT intervention) for people with heart failure and lung disease (COPD or ILD). David has been conducting outpatient t ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
2M ago
Four percent of deaths in Canada are due to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Four percent.
The number of people who have used MAID in Canada since it was legalized in 2016 has increased year on year from about 1,000 people in the first year to over 13,000 people in 2022. California, which has a similar population size as Canada and legalized MAID around the same time, has fewer than 1000 deaths per year from MAID.
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. &n ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
3M ago
We’ve talked a lot about comprehensive dementia care on the GeriPal podcast but while the evidence is clear that these programs work, the uptake has been limited largely because there hasn't been a strong financial case for it. Don’t get me wrong, the evidence points to cost savings, but as Chris Callahan and Kathleen Unroe pointed out in a JAGS editorial in 2020 “in comprehensive dementia care models, savings may accrue to Medicare, but the expenses accrue to a fluid and unstable network of local service providers, patients, and their families.”
The good news is that the financial case for co ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
3M ago
One of the things I love about Liz Dzeng’s work is the way in which it draws upon, echoes, and advances our understanding of the influence of culture on the end of life experience. This field is not new. In his book The Hour of our Death Philip Aries described a long evolution in western civilization of cultural attitudes towards dying. 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. Similarly Jessica Zitter, an intensivist and palliati ..read more
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
3M ago
To my teenagers, climate change is an existential crisis. It’s the end of the world as we know it. They decry the lack of serious attention and prioritization this issue has in the US. My kids ask - why don’t adults care about this issue the same way that they and their friends care about it? My kids have taught me that the emphasis on personal responsibility (reduce your carbon footprint!) was supported by the fossil fuel industry, because it shifted responsibility for change from industry to individuals. Voting and emailing congress to advocate for systemic chan ..read more