show episodes
 
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
  continue reading
 
Loading …
show series
 
On 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? …
  continue reading
 
Health 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…
  continue reading
 
In 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…
  continue reading
 
Most 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…
  continue reading
 
What 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…
  continue reading
 
What’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…
  continue reading
 
In 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…
  continue reading
 
June 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…
  continue reading
 
Happy 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…
  continue reading
 
If 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…
  continue reading
 
The 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…
  continue reading
 
Have 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…
  continue reading
 
As 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…
  continue reading
 
Our 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…
  continue reading
 
We’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…
  continue reading
 
Peter 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 …
  continue reading
 
More 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…
  continue reading
 
Loading …

Quick Reference Guide

Copyright 2025 | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | | Copyright
Listen to this show while you explore
Play