GeriPal

One of our first GeriPal posts was titled "Rant on Terminology," by Patrice Villars, NP.  In the spirit of looking back over our first 10 years, here is the opening paragraph to that post:

News Headlines read: Sen. Edward Kennedy loses battle with cancer. Really, he lost? I thought he died from a malignant brain tumor, an “aggressive” brain tumor. The median survival is less than a year for people for his particular tumor. Kennedy was diagnosed in May of 2008. He lived over 15 months after diagnosis. What a loser. He must not have fought hard enough. Huh? I thought he spent most of his life battling for social and health care reform in America. In this week's GeriPal podcast we take a deeper dive into this issue of language and medicine.  We are joined by guests Anna DeForest, MD, MFA, a resident in Neurology at Yale, and Brian Block, MD, a pulmonary critical care fellow at UCSF.  

Anna recently published a paper in the NEJM describing her reaction to hearing terms like, &…

Today's podcast is something special.  First it was our first live podcast at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). Second, we had the opportunity to talk with Rachelle Bernacki and Jo Paladino on two articles that came out today in two JAMA journals on the Serious Illness Care Program:
Effect of the Serious Illness Care Program in Outpatient Oncology: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial . JAMA Intern Med.Evaluating an Intervention to Improve Communication Between Oncology Clinicians and Patients With Life-Limiting Cancer:  A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial of the Serious Illness Care Program. JAMA Oncology.   The Serious Illness Care Program described in these publications is a quality-improvement intervention designed to enhance communication between oncology clinicians and patients with advanced cancer improve goal-concordant care, peacefulness, therapeutic alliance, an…

We are gearing up for the live broadcast of the GeriPal Podcast at the AAHPM / HPNA Annual meeting on Thursday March 14th at 1:30 PM in the Windemere Ballroom.  Our session is broken up into two parts:

First, we will discuss the importance podcasts play in many of our daily lives, and the value it has in promoting hospice and palliative care.  We will then describe the steps needed to create ones own hospice and palliative care podcast, drilling down to the nuts and bolts including recording equipment and software, conducting live and remote interviews, and how to prepare in advance before recording.   In the second portion of the session, we will conduct a live Podcast on a cutting edge published paper.   We are very excited to announce that we will be having Rachelle Bernacki and Jo Paladino as our live guest discussing recent outcomes of the Serious Illness Care Program.  
So join us on Thursday in person or via our live feed on the GeriPal YouTube page.   You can also download our…

As Eric notes in the introduction, this recent study in JAMA by Jeff Williamson and colleagues led to some very contradictory headlines.  Some headlines proclaimed that lowering blood pressure prevents dementia, and others stated the opposite, that lowering blood pressure does not prevent dementia.

So what exactly did the study show?  Do these results apply to patients we commonly see in Geriatrics?  What should we make of the fact that after the trial was stopped early the blood pressures in the lower blood pressure target group rose - does this mean you can't achieve intensive blood pressure lowering "in the real world"?  

In the podcast Jeff Williamson thoughtfully responds to these and other challenging questions (primarily posed by our guest host Lauren Hunt).

What do you make of it?  

I know that learning the song Old Blue Chair by Kenny Chesney helped lower my blood pressure!

Enjoy!

-@AlexSmithMD

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