GeriPal

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

Don't forget to subscribe to the GeriPal YouTube channel! Listen to Ge…

by Christian Sinclair

The Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care is only a week away, and it is time to announce the details for the 13th Annual Pallimed-GeriPal Party!

Just so you all know from here to eternity, the answer to the question of "When is the Pallimed-GeriPal party?" is Thursday night at 9pm local time the week of the Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care (but just to be clear it is not an official part of the meeting). We love meeting other hospice and palliative care clinicians and advocates, so feel free to invite and bring any colleagues or new friends with you as this is not an exclusive crowd.

This year we will have the traditional pub crawl and returning for the second year the #hpmParty ESCAPE ROOMS!

For the pub crawl we will be starting at Cuba Libre at 9pm in the Saratoga room Thursday, March 14th. Around 10pm, we will likely be moving on to the next destination. Like always though, these are rough estimates of time, so if you want t…

In the 1990s, Susan Tolle helped create the POLST.  Now she and Elizabeth Eckstrom want to change it.  And personally, I think they're right.  Times have changed, and the POLST has gained a clearer purpose, distinct from Advance Directives.  

POLST is for emergency situations.  When does the EMS provider ever say, "Quick!  Get the PEG tube kit!  We need to insert a PEG tube stat."  

Never.  

Feeding tubes are a decision that can be discussed in advance and a preference recorded in an advance directive.  But it's the odd one out on the POLST form - and more than the CPR preferences and Scope of Care sections, is the outlier.  It's the most "list-based" approach to advance care planning - do you want a feeding tube?  How about dialysis?  An LVAD?  In certain situations, with certain illnesses, these are fine questions to have.  But in general for older adults, they make no sense.  Advance care planning should be directed by goals and values, not lists of int…

by: Olivia Gamboa, MD (@Liv_g_g)

As palliative care providers, we are lucky to be a part of a relatively new and growing field.  This provides us with both an innovative energy and the opportunity to shape what our specialty will look like in the coming years.  Concurrently, medicine as a whole is at the precipice of many sea changes in therapies and care models brought about by improved analytics (most notably artificial intelligence) and novel biotechnology.  The confluence of these technological currents means that new trends in practice are emerging quickly.  These are my thoughts about the possible directions our specialty will take and the opportunities (and challenges) this will present over the next several years.

Disclaimer: I’m just a palliative care fellow who likes to muse about these things.  These predictions do not necessarily reflect the views of my institution and are not projections nor certainties and should not be taken as such.  And remember, as Yogi Berra opine…

On this week's podcast we have Bridget Sumser, a clinical palliative care social worker, board member for the Advanced Palliative Hospice Social Worker certification exam, and now co-author of a new book "Palliative Care: A Guide for Health Social Workers". 

We go over a host of subjects with Bridget about the space between primary and specialty social work when caring for seriously ill patients and families.  Her new book, organized by the domains of the National Consensus Project Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, is aimed toward all social workers who care for seriously ill adults.  We also talk about the role of social workers who practice within palliative care teams and the new Advanced Practice Palliative and Hospice Social Work Certification Exam.

I'll leave you off with a quote from Bridget about the "gray continuum":
"...in the building of a specialty, within social work practice, I think a lot of people experience a lot of turf issues…