GeriPal

There is a very important question floating around right now: does Donald Trump have dementia? Admit it, Geriatricians. You have wondered this. You have talked about it with colleagues over the MOCAs you were printing out for clinic. I will own up first- I have.

You, I and a million articles, blogs, radio shows and news sites have brought this up in the last two years. Just this last week there was an analysis of his speech that showed it has markedly declined in sophistication and coherence in the last 30 years. This was inspired by a 2015 analysis of Ronald Reagan, whose speech got simpler over the course of his presidency and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s formally five years after he left office (so we know he was developing it before then), and George H.W. Bush, whose speech stayed the same and does not have dementia. Together with irrational behavior, fabrication of information and either disinhibition or forgetfulness (who knows what made him tell Russians secret intel) t…

BREAKING!  We are posting this the moment the embargo lifts on Rebecca Sudore's Prepare trial.  As most of you know, Rebecca Sudore, MD, Professor of Medicine, UCSF Division of Geriatrics, is a giant in the field of advance care planning, particularly among diverse older adults with low health literacy.

Rebecca is giving a plenary presentation about the Prepare Trial at the American Geriatrics Society meeting in (hot) San Antonio Texas.  Today.  Right now in fact.  We timed the release of GeriPal's blog post and podcast to coincide with her AGS plenary.   Coincidently, JAMA Internal Medicine lifted their embargo at the same time. 😉

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.  You can view (and use!) the web-based decision aid at www.prepareforyourcare.org (in English and Sp…

One-third of the Medicare patients who died in 2011 had 4 or more transitions within last 6 months of life. #HPMhttps://t.co/jn2x6tLJmgpic.twitter.com/rW55dKhFJE — JAGS (@AGSJournal) April 4, 2017
Check out our inaugural JAGS GeriPal Podcast!  JAGS, or Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, is the premier journal for aging research.  We will be interviewing a JAGS author regularly as part of this series.

For the inaugural JAGS GeriPal podcast, we spoke with Shi-Yi Wang, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at Yale.  Dr. Wang published a JAGS manuscript titled, "End-of-Life Transition Patterns of Medicare Beneficiaries."  

The @AGSJournal tweet about this article went viral.  OK, it went viral in terms of a Geriatrics tweet, not Beyonce viral.

A major part of the popularity of this tweet was due to the accompanying image.  The image that Dr. Wang created told the story of frequent transitions from setting to setting clearly, in a picture, rather than wor…

On this weeks GeriPal podcast, we interview Dr. Samir K. Sinha, MD on how he has influenced local and national policy in Canada to redesign the care given to older adults.  We talk about the key elements to design an elder friendly hospital and community, including elder friendly design, as well how we can all get involved in influencing policy.

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.



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Transcript of the podcast:

Eric: Welcome to the GeriPal Podcast. This is Eric Widera.

Alex: This is Alex Smith.

Eric: And Alex, I heard we are going international today.

Alex: We are going international t…