Geripal-podcast

In this week's GeriPal Podcast, sponsored also by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, we talk with Tom Gill, MD, Professor of Medicine at Yale. With guest co-host Dan Matlock, MD, from the University of Colorado, we talk with Tom about his recent JAGS publication on the relationship between distressing symptoms, disability, and hospice enrollment. Tom conducted this study in a long running cohort of older adults that has made a number of outstanding contributions to the GeriPal literature (see links on the GeriPal website). Tom's song request? Stairway to Heaven. This podcast was recorded at the recent Beeson meeting, an aging research meeting, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. At the end, you hear about 30-40 of us singing the end of Stairway around a campfire. As in singing, "And as we wind on down the road...:" Nailed it!

On this week's podcast, we have invited Dr. Kimberly Curseen to talk about how implicit bias influences us as providers in geriatrics, hospice, and palliative care, as well as the role of that cultural competence and cultural humility should play in our practice. Kimberly Curseen, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at Emory School of Medicine and Director of Outpatient Supportive/Palliative Care, Emory Healthcare.

On this GeriPal podcast we discuss the value of "scenario planning" in informed decision making with Gretchen Schwarze, Associate Professor in the Division of Vascular Surgery at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Schwarze is a board-certified vascular surgeon and medical ethicist who recently wrote an article on this subject in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Scenario planning comes from the economics literature, but Dr. Schwarze advocates for its use in medicine, giving healthcare providers the tools to say “I cannot predict the future, but if all goes well, this is what is likely to follow, and if things go poorly, this is what we can expect.” The aim is not to develop the “correct” scenario, but to describe a range of stories illustrating how the future might unfold.

Back in 2009, Pallimed created one of my favorite posts titled "Top 10 Contemporary Palliative Care Songs". In it, they made a list of "contemporary" songs from many different genres that have palliative themes. For todays podcast, we aim to update this list with songs that inspire, move, or make us think about geriatrics or palliative care. As with the Pallimed post, this is all personal preference. So we would love to hear from you. What one song would you have included in this podcast if you were sitting in the studio? Put it in the comments section on www.geripal.org

On this weeks podcast, we have Sarah Hooper, J.D., the Executive Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science and Health Policy, an interprofessional partnerships in education, research, and clinical training and service. We talk with Sarah about her work creating the Medical-Legal Partnership for Seniors Clinic (MLPS) in which law students and faculty provide free legal assistance to low-income older patients at the UCSF Medical Center and at the San Francisco VA.

Zara Cooper the Need to Integrate Geriatrics and Palliative Care into Trauma Surgery by Alex Smith and Eric Widera

How to have a code status conversation with Laura Petrillo and a live studio audience by Alex Smith and Eric Widera

Vicki Jackson and David Ryan: Living with Cancer by Alex Smith and Eric Widera

The Veterans Healthcare System is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States and one that trains the majority of physicians who practice in the US. We interview journalist and author Suzanne Gordon about the battle that is going on for the $70 billion spent on Veterans health every year.

We interview Anna Chodos, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine and Division of Geriatrics at UCSF, about her work in creating the Optimizing Aging Collaborative. The collaborative's goal is to enhance and unify care of older adults in the community by creating a unique partnerships between public, human service, and academic organizations. The Optimizing Aging Collaborative at UCSF, which was founded in July 2015 as a Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The collaborative includes a broad array of experts to provide education and innovative services that address older adults’ health, social, and legal needs, that hopefully other cities can replicate.

On today's podcast, we interview Steve Pantilat about his new book "Life After the Diagnosis: Expert Advice on Living Well with Serious Illness for Patients and Caregivers." Steve is a Professor of Medicine, the Department of Medicine at UC San Francisco, Kates-Burnard and Hellman Distinguished Professor in Palliative Care, and Founding Director, the UCSF Palliative Care Program. In his book, Steve writes to patients and family members coping with serious illnesses about the difficult decisions they face in a convoluted medical system, giving them practical advice on a wide range of common concerns. We talk with Steve about how he came up with the idea of the book, his views on living well and what a "good death is", the role that hope plays in decision making, and the language that we use in medicine that can easily be misunderstood.

This week's GeriPal Podcast features NY Times journalist Paula Span about what we can do as educators, as researchers, and as clinicians, to collaborate with the media. During Paula's extensive career as a reporter, she has written for the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Esquire, Parenting, Glamour, Ms and several city magazines. Paula currently writes at The New York Times for The New Old Age, and trains the next generation of journalists at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

What should you say to your older patient when it's time to stop cancer screening? This week's GeriPal Podcast features Nancy Shoenborn, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Shoenborn published a paper in JAMA Internal Medicine this week on older adults perspectives on cancer screening cessation, and using life expectancy to justify stopping screening.

Today's GeriPal Podcast features Vanessa Grubbs, a nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF. Vanessa talks with us about her forthcoming book titled, "Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers," to be released June 13, but available for pre-order now. Dr. Grubbs' book tells the story of her journey from primary care to nephrology to palliative care, of falling in love with a man to donating a kidney to him to marriage, and of the journeys of the diverse, older, complex patients she's cared for with chronic kidney disease, who sometimes choose not to start dialysis.

For this week's GeriPal podcast we talk with Sandra Moody, MD, about her experiences in geriatrics and palliative care in Kamogawa City, Japan. Sandra helped to start the hospice and palliative care service at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center prior to moving to Japan. We spoke with Sandra about differences between geriatrics and palliative care as practiced in the US vs. Japan.

We talked with Rebecca about the results of The Prepare Trail, a randomized controlled trial of an easy-to-read advance directive PLUS a web-based decision aid vs the easy-to-read advance directive alone in 414 older veterans with chronic disease

A study published in JAGS reported approximately one-third of the Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2011 had four or more transitions within their last 6 months of life. We discuss with the studies author about how he became interested in transitions and why this is important.

On todays podcast, we interview Dr. Samir K. Sinha, MD on how he has influenced local and national policy to redesign the care we give to older adults. Dr. Sinha is the Director of Geriatrics at the Sinai Health System, an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Assistant Professor of Medicine Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Among his many accomplishments is that he lead Ontario's “seniors care strategy" and is now involved in the development of a National Seniors Strategy.

On this weeks podcast, we interview Michael D. Fratkin, a palliative care clinician and founder of ResolutionCare, a palliative care service for rural and resource poor areas in Northern California. We discuss the barriers and benefits of providing specialty level palliative care for areas that generally have no access to these services. We also discuss novel approaches, including in-home video conferencing.

Today's GeriPal podcast features Sean Morrison, Geriatrician and Palliative Medicine physician, director of the National Palliative Care Research Center and the Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute at Mount Sinai in New York. We talk with Sean about a new report titled, "How We Work: Trends and Insights in Hospital Palliative Care." This report was co-produced by the National Palliative Care Research Center and the Center to Advance Palliative Care. The report summarizes the current state of palliative care practice in the US.