GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

We recently published a podcast on palliative care for kidney failure, focusing on conservative kidney management. Today we’re going to focus upstream on the decision to initiate dialysis vs conserva…

In March 2020, we launched our first podcast on COVID-19. Over the past four years, we’ve seen many changes—some positive, some negative. While many of us are eager to move past COVID (myself include…

Cannabis is complicated. It can mean many things, including a specific type of plant, the chemicals in the plant, synthetic analogs, or products that have these components. The doses of the most wide…

When treating heart failure, how do we distinguish between the expanding list of medications recommended for “Guideline Directed Medical Therapy” (GDMT) and what might be considered runaway polypharm…

In fellowship, one of the leaders at MGH used to quote Balfour Mount as saying, “You say you’ve worked on teams? Show me your scars.”  Scars, really?  Yes. I’ve been there. You probably have too. On …

Can death be portrayed as beautiful?

In this episode, we share the joy of talking with Wendy MacNaughton (artist, author, graphic journalist) and Frank Ostaseski (Buddhist teacher, author, founder of…

If palliative care was a drug, one question we would want to know before prescribing it is what dose we should give.  Give too little - it may not work.  Give too much, it may cause harm (even if the…

Well-being and resilience are so hot right now. We have an endless supply of CME courses on decreasing burnout through self-care strategies. Well-being committees are popping up at every level of an …

In today’s podcast we set the stage with the story of Dax Cowart, who in 1973 was a 25 year old man horribly burned in a freak accident. Two thirds of his body was burned, most of his fingers were am…

Serious illness communication is hard. We must often deliver complex medical information that carries heavy emotional weight in pressured settings to individuals with varying cultural backgrounds, va…

We’ve talked about Brain Death before with Robert (Bob) Troug and guest-host Liz Dzeng, and in many ways today’s podcast is a follow up to that episode (apologies Bob for mispronouncing your last nam…

Anti-Asian hate incidents rose dramatically during COVID, likely fueled by prominent statements about the “Chinese virus.”  VIewed through the wider lens of history, this was just the latest in a lon…

(We couldn’t resist when Miguel Paniagua proposed this podcast idea and title. And no, you’ll be relieved to hear Eric and I did not imitate the interview style of Zach Galifiniakis).

We’ve talked a …

What is a healthy diet and how much does it really matter that we try to eat one as we age?  That’s the topic of this week's podcast with three amazing guests: Anna Pleet, Elizabeth Eckstrom, and Emi…

We are dusting off our crystal balls today with three amazing guests who have all recently published an article on prognosis over the last couple months: Kara Bischoff, James Deardorff, and Elizabeth…

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concluded back in 2000 that there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against routine screening for dementia in older adults. Are there, thoug…

Emergency podcast! We’ve been asked by many people, mostly junior/mid career faculty, to quickly record a podcast on ageism and the elections.  People are feeling conflicted.  On the one hand, they h…

In May we did a podcast on KidneyPal (the integration of palliative care in renal disease), which made us think, hmmm… one organ right next door is the liver. Maybe we should do a podcast on LiverP…

“Anxiety is a lot like a toddler. It never stops talking, tells you you’re wrong about everything, and wakes you up at 3 a.m.”  I’m not sure who wrote this quote, but it feels right to me. We’ve all …

I have to start with the song.  On our last podcast about urinary incontinence the song request was, “Let it go.”  This time around several suggestions were raised.  Eric suggested, “Even Flow,” by …