A geriatrics and palliative medicine podcast for every health care professional. Two UCSF doctors, Eric Widera and Alex Smith, 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. You'll laugh, learn, and maybe sing along. CME and MOC credit available (AMA PRA Category 1 credits) at www.geripal.org
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What instead? Alternatives to Beers: Todd Semla and Mike Steinman
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44:38On a prior podcast we talked with Todd Semla and Mike Steinman about the update to the AGS Beers Criteria of potentially inappropriate medications in older adults (Todd and Mike co-chair the AGS Beers Criteria Panel). One of the questions that came up was - well if we should probably think twice or avoid that medication, what should we do instead? …
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Art Museum-Based Medical Education: Amy Klein, Laura Morrison, and Gordon Wood
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49:01
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49:01Health care trainees rotate through a variety of different settings. ICUs, hospital wards, and outpatient clinics. If they're lucky, they might even spend time in a nursing home. But on today’s podcast, we’re adding one more setting to that list: your local art museum. In this thought-provoking episode, we explore how art museum teaching is being i…
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We Need a Care Revolution: Victor Montori
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47:41
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47:41In his book, “Why We Revolt,” Victor Montori decries the industrialization of healthcare. We’ve become a healthcare factory, beholden to health systems motivated by profit. In particular, he laments the loss of the “care” aspect of healthcare. Clinicians are under the clock to churn through patients. Patients are tasked with doing work outside of t…
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System Wide Goals of Care Implementation: A Podcast with Ira Byock, Chris Dale, and Matt Gonzales
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50:06Most health care providers understand the importance of goals-of-care conversations in aligning treatment plans with patients’ goals, especially for those with serious medical problems. And yet, these discussions often either don't happen or at least don't get documented. How can we do better? In today’s podcast, we sit down with Ira Byock, Chris D…
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Death Anxiety: Dani Chammas & Keri Brenner
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1:00:23What is death anxiety? We spend the first 15 minutes of the podcast addressing this question. And maybe this was unfair to our guests, the fabulous dynamic duo of palliative psychiatrists Dani Chammas and Keri Brenner (listen to their prior podcasts on therapeutic presence and the angry patient). After all, we invited them on to our podcast to disc…
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Individualizing Blood Pressure Goals in Older Adults: A Podcast with Mitra Jamshidian, Simon Ascher and Mark Supiano
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46:41
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46:41What’s the ideal blood pressure target for older adults with hypertension? Should we aim for a systolic BP of 120 mmHg in all older adults, as suggested by the SPRINT trial? Or should we be more flexible—especially for those who are frail or among the oldest old? This week on the GeriPal Podcast, we explore the nuances of managing blood pressure in…
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Should Palliative Care be in the Survivorship Business? A Podcast with Laura Petrillo, Laura Shoemaker
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47:31In this week’s episode, we dig into two deceptively simple questions: When does someone become a cancer survivor, and should palliative care be in the business of caring for them? Spoiler: It’s more complicated than it seems. We’ve invited two palliative care doctors to talk about survivorship with us: Laura Petrillo, a physician-researcher at Mass…
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Health and Wealth Shocks: Lauren Hunt, Rebecca Rodin, Tsai-Chin Cho
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44:35
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44:35June Lunney famously characterized the end of life functional course of people with dementia as a slow dwindle over time. Tom Gill later found that people with dementia do indeed have persistent severe disability throughout the last year of their lives. But from our clinical work, many of us are familiar with people with dementia who experience sud…
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Transgender Health, Aging, and Advocacy: A Podcast with Noelle Marie Javier and Jace Flatt
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48:24Happy Pride Month GeriPal listeners! Transgender issues are in the news. Just today (June 17th) as we record this podcast: Ezra Klein released a wonderful interview with Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of congress A judge ruled that cuts to NIH grants focused on minority groups, including transgender people, were illegal and orde…
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What You Should Know About Radiation Oncology: A Podcast with Anish Butala, Emily Martin and Evie Kalmar
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49:44
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49:44If you’re anything like me, you might find the process of what happens to patients when they visit a radiation oncologist somewhat mysterious. During my training, I didn’t receive much education about radiation oncology, and I’m not entirely sure what some of the terms mean (hypofractionated means fewer sessions, right?). Well, today’s podcast aims…
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Implementing Palliative Care in Nursing Homes
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48:06The need for better palliative care in nursing homes is significant. Consider this: the majority of the 1.4 million adults residing in U.S. nursing homes grapple with serious illnesses, and roughly half experience dementia. Many also suffer from distressing symptoms like pain. In addition, about 25% of all deaths in the United States occur within t…
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Lucid Episodes: Andrea Gilmore-Bykovskyi & Andrew Peterson
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48:55Have any of you watched the movie “The Notebook”? At the end, one of the characters, who has dementia, experiences an episode of lucidity. When I watched it, between tears (I’m a complete softie) I remember thinking, “Oh no! This will give people false hope! That their loved one is ‘in there.’ If only they could find the right key to unlock the loc…
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Music as Medicine: Jenny Chen, Tyler Jorgensen, & Theresa Allison
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42:03
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42:03As you know, dear listeners, I love music. We start each podcast with a song in part to shift the frame, taking people out of their academic selves and into a more informal conversation. Well, today’s guests love music at least as much if not more than me, and they each make a strong case for music as medicine. Jenny Chen is a palliative care fello…
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Nudges for Prognosis and Comfort Care in the ICU: Kate Courtright, Scott Halpern, & Jaspal Singh
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48:27
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48:27Our main focus today was on nudging critical care clinicians to consider a more palliative approach to care. Our guests are all trained in critical care: Kate Courtright, Scott Halpern, and Jaspal Singh. Kate and Scott have additional training in palliative medicine. To start. we review: What is a nudge? Also called behavioral interventions, heuris…
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Psilocybin in Serious Illness: A Podcast with James Downar, Ali John Zarrabi and Margaret Ross
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46:57We’ve covered psychedelics on the podcast before—first 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. In today’s episode, we’re taking a closer look at the current s…
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HIV, Aging, and Palliative Care: Peter Selwyn and Meredith Greene
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48:59Peter Selwyn, one of today’s guests, has been caring for people living with HIV for over 40 years. In that time, care of people with HIV has changed dramatically. Initially, there was no treatment, then treatments with marginal efficacy, complex schedules, and a tremendous burden of side effects and drug-drug interactions. The average age at death …
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Potentially Unsafe Low-evidence Treatments: Adam Marks, Laura Taylor, & Jill Schneiderhan
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45:26More and more people are, “doing their own research.” Self-identified experts and influencers on podcasts (podcasts!) and social media endorse treatments that are potentially harmful and have little to no evidence of benefit, or have only been studied in animals. An increasing number of federal leaders have a track record of endorsing such products…
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