GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast

Apr 25 2024 376
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast artwork

A geriatrics and palliative care podcast for every health care professional. We 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. Hosted by Eric Widera and Alex Smith. CME available!

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Palliative Care Nursing: Podcast with Betty Ferrell about ELNEC

Apr 25 2024 47 mins  
As Betty Ferrell says on our podcast today, nurses play an essential role in care of people with serious illness. Who spends the most time with the patient in the infusion center? Doing home care? Hospice visits? In the ICU at the bedside? Nurses. ELNEC (End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium) celebrates it’s 25th anniversary in 2025. We talk today with Betty Ferrell, who has b

The Promise and Pitfalls of AI in Medicine: Bob Wachter

Apr 17 2024 44 mins  
Eric asks the question that is on many of our minds - is the future of AI more Skynet from Terminator, in which AI takes over the world and drives humanity to the brink of extinction, or Wall-E, in which a benevolent and empathetic AI restores our humanity? Our guest today is Bob Wachter, Chair of Medicine at UCSF and author of the Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn

Ambivalence in Decision-Making: A Podcast with Joshua Briscoe, Bryanna Moore, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby & Olubukunola Dwyer

Apr 10 2024 51 mins  
Ambivalence is a tough concept when it comes to decision-making. On the one hand, when people have ambivalence but haven't explored why they are ambivalent, they are prone to bad, value-incongruent decisions. On the other hand, acknowledging and exploring ambivalence may lead to better, more ethical, and less biased decisions. On today's podcast, Joshua Briscoe, Bryanna Moore, Jenn

Surrogate Decision Making: Bernie Lo and Laurie Dornbrand

Apr 03 2024 48 mins  
In 1983, a 25 year old Nancy Cruzan was thrown from her car while driving home in Missouri, landing in a water filled ditch. She was resuscitated by EMS, but did not regain higher brain function, and was eventually diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. In 1988, Cruzan’s parents requested that her feeding tube be removed, arguing that she would not want to continue

PC Trials at State of Science: Tom LeBlanc, Kate Courtright, & Corita Grudzen

Mar 27 2024 39 mins  
One marker of the distance we’ve traveled in palliative care is the blossoming evidence base for the field. Ten years ago we would have been hard pressed to find 3 clinical trial abstracts submitted to the annual meeting, much less high quality randomized trials with robust measures, sample sizes, and analytics plans. Well, as a kick off to this year’s first in-person State of

Electronic Frailty Indexes: Kate Callahan, Ariela Orkaby, & Dae Kim

Mar 20 2024 44 mins  
What is frailty? Kate Callahan relates a clear metaphor on today’s podcast. A frail person is like an origami boat: fine in still water, but can’t withstand a breeze, or waves. Fundamentally, frailty is about vulnerability to stress. In 2021 we talked with Linda Fried about phenotypic frailty. Today we talk with Kate Callahan, Ariela Orkaby, & Dae Kim about deficit accumulation

Dysphagia Revisited: A Podcast with Raele Donetha Robison and Nicole Rogus-Pulia

Mar 13 2024 46 mins  
Almost a decade ago, our hospice and palliative care team decided to do a “Thickened Liquid Challenge.” This simple challenge was focused on putting ourselves in the shoes of our patients with dysphagia who are prescribed thickened liquids. The rules of the challenge were simple: fluids must be thickened to “honey consistency” using a beverage thickener for a 12-hour contig

End-of-Life Doulas: A Podcast with Jane Euler, Beth Klint, and John Loughnane

Mar 06 2024 43 mins  
In the last several years, I’ve seen more and more articles about end-of-life doulas (like this NY Times article from 2021). Despite this, in my 20-year career as a palliative care physician, I have yet to see a death doula in the wild. I’m unsure what they do, how often they’re used, and who pays for their work. So, on today’s podcast, we try to get to the bottom of what e

GeriPal 300th Episode: Ask Me Anything Hot Ones Style

Feb 28 2024 43 mins  
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

Psychological Issues in Palliative Care: Elissa Kozlov and Des Azizoddin

Feb 21 2024 45 mins  
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