GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In her essay “Why Read a Poem in a Time Like This?”, Marilyn McEntyre writes:

All of us need it. We need it because good poems do something prose can’t do. They invite and enable us to notice the pre…

And today our guests agree to disagree.  

And yet, and yet…

They also agree across a whol…

A little over a decade ago, Ken Covinsky wrote a GeriPal post about a Jack Iwashyna JAMA study finding that older adults who survive sepsis are likely to develop new functional and cognitive defici…

There is a lively debate going on in academic circles about the value of Advance Care Planning (ACP).  It’s not a new debate but has gathered steam at least in palliative care circles since Sean Morr…

More Health Policy this week! Today, we discuss “SNPs” but this is not a podcast about haircuts during the pandemic. We take a deeper dive into the world of Medicare Advantage and what it means for v…

Investor money and venture capital funding is pouring into Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. Enrollment in MA plans has more than doubled from 12 million members in 2011 to 26 million in 2021. What does…

Three months ago we did a podcast with Randy Curits about his recent diagnosis of ALS in March and what it was like for someone who studies and cares for people living with serious illness, to now b…

It’s GeriPal’s 200th episode.  Yup, we started the podcast in 2016 and over the years we have grown from basically podcasting for Alex’s mom to now getting over 25,000 plays per month.   

So to celeb…

Geriatric Oncology has arrived.  Yes, Louise Walter has been leading the fight to improve cancer screening in older adults for years.  But when it came to geriatricizing the way we assess and treat o…

Geriatric anesthesia is a thing.  The average age of people getting surgery is increasing.  Anesthesiologists and surgeons feel that with new techniques and approaches they can perform surgery on pat…

The great resignation is upon us.  One in five health-care workers has left their job since the pandemic started.  Geriatrics and palliative care are not immune to this, nor are we immune to the bur…

I don’t consider myself spiritual.  For some in palliative care, this would be considered heresy as we are told “everyone is spiritual.”  But, hey, I’m not.  So there.  However, despite not being spi…

Though “breath” is in the title of Wes Ely’s book (and his song choice by the Police), relationships are its beating heart.

The book operates on two levels.

On one level, Wes Ely’s book is an autob…

Anyone who cares for individuals with serious illness must live in a messy space where tough conversations about treatment decisions are common and complicated.  

On today’s podcast we talk with Jame…