The Roots of Palliative Care: Michael Kearney, Sue Britton, and Justin Sanders
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Release Date: 03/13/2025
Loss of DEI Hurts Everyone: Farah Stockman, Ali Thomas, Ken Covinsky
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
I read Farah Stockman’s article in the NYT on , and thought, “Yes, and ‘everyone’ includes harm to our healthcare workforce, our patients, and their families.” So we’re delighted that Farah Stockman, pulitzer prize winning journalist, author of , and editorial board member at the New York TImes joins us to set the bigger picture for this discussion. Farah provides clear examples from the Biden administration, in which having the most diverse cabinet in history was critical to building bridges, empathy, and inspiring others to feel included. We are also pleased to welcome Ali...
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RCT of PC in ED: Corita Grudzen, Fernanda Bellolio, & Tammie Quest
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Early in my research career, I was fascinated by the (then) frontier area of palliative care in the emergency department. I emergency medicine clinicians what they thought when a patient who is seriously ill and DNR comes to the ED, and some responded, (paraphrasing), what are they doing here? This is not why I went into emergency medicine. I went into emergency medicine to act. I can’t do the primary thing I’ve been trained to do: ABC, ABC, ABCs. Most emergency providers wanted to for seriously ill patients, but they didn’t have the knowledge, skills, or experience to do...
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GeriPal Takeover! Nancy Lundebjerg and Annie Medina-Walpole
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Whelp, goodbye folks! Eric and I have been DOGE’d. In a somewhat delayed April Fools, Nancy Lundebjerg and Annie Medina-Walpole have taken over podcast host duties this week. Their purpose is to interview me, Eric, and Ken Covinsky about your final AGS literature review plenary session taking place at the Annual Meeting in Chicago this May (for those attending, our session is the plenary the morning of May 10). We discuss our favorite articles, parody songs, and memories from AGS meetings past, with a little preview of a song for this year’s meeting. We covered: ...
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Pragmatic Trial of ACP: Jennifer Wolff, Sydney Dy, Danny Scerpella, and Jasmine Santoyo-Olsson
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
A pragmatic trial evaluates the effectiveness of a treatment or intervention in “real-world” clinical practice. Outcomes are typically assessed from available records. Eligibility in pragmatic trials are often broad, and don’t have the exclusions of efficacy studies, which examine treatment effects under highly controlled conditions in highly select populations. Today we are delighted to welcome Jennifer Wolff, Sydney Dy, and Danny Scerpella, who conducted a (ACP) in primary care practices; and Jasmine Santoyo-Olsson, who wrote an accompanying . We spend the last portion of...
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Hastening Death by Stopping Eating and Drinking: Hope Wechkin, Thaddeus Pope, & Josh Briscoe
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Eric and Alex have featured discussions about complex bioethical concepts around caring for people at the end of life, including voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (), and multiple episodes about the ethical issues surrounding medical aid in dying (). Recently, discussion has emerged about how these issues intertwine in caring for patients with advancing dementia who have stated that they would not want to continue living in that condition: for those with an advanced directive to stop eating and drinking, how do we balance caring for their rational past self and their experiential...
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The Roots of Palliative Care: Michael Kearney, Sue Britton, and Justin Sanders
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
As far as we’ve come in the 50 years since Balfour Mount and Sue Britton opened the first palliative care at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Quebec, have we lost something along the way? In today’s podcast we welcome some of the early pioneers in palliative care to talk about the roots of palliative care. Sue Britton was the first nurse hired on that palliative care unit. on a transformational meeting in Cicely Saunders’s office, with Balfour Mount at her side and a glass of sherry. Justin Sanders wants to be sure the newer generations of palliative care clinicians understand...
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PC for People Experiencing Homelessness: Naheed Dosani
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
I was very proud to use the word “” on today’s podcast. See if you can pick out the moment. I say something like, “Palliative care for people experiencing homelessness is, in many ways, the apotheosis of great palliative care.” And I believe that to be true. When you think about the early concepts that shaped the field, you can see how palliative care for persons experiencing homelessness fits like a hand in a glove: total pain envisioned by Cicely Saunders, which even its s included social suffering like loneliness; or Balfour Mount, who coined the term...
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PC for Patients with Substance Use Disorder: Janet Ho, Sach Kale, Julie Childers
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Much like , we plan to revisit certain high impact and dynamic topics frequently. Substance use disorder is one of those complex issues in which clinical practice is changing rapidly. You can listen to our prior podcasts on substance use disorder , , , and . Today we talk with experts Janet Ho, Sach Kale, and Julie Childers about opioid use disorder and serious illness. We address: Why is caring for patients with this overlap so hard? Inspired by Dani Chammas’s paper in Annals of Internal Medicine titled, “” we talk about countertransference: start by asking...
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Trauma-Informed Care: A Podcast with Mariah Robertson, Kate Duchowny, and Ashwin Kotwal
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
Trauma is a universal experience, and our approach as health care providers to trauma should be universal as well. That’s my main take-home point after learning from our three guests today when talking about trauma-informed care, an approach that highlights key principles including safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural sensitivity. With that said, there is so much more that I learned from our guests for this trauma-informed care podcast. Our guests include Mariah Robertson, Kate Duchowny, and Ashwin Kotwal. Mariah discussed her . Kate and Ashwin...
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Plenary Abstracts at AAHPM/HPNA: Yael Schenker, Na Ouyang, Marie Bakitas
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Podcast
In today’s podcast we were delighted to be joined by the presenters of the top scientific abstracts for the Annual Assembly of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine () and the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Nurses Association (). Eric and I interviewed these presenters at the meeting on Thursday (before the pub crawl, thankfully). On Saturday, they formally presented their abstracts during the plenary session, followed by a wonderful question and answer session with Hillary Lum doing a terrific job in the role of moderator. Our three guests were Marie...
info_outlineAs far as we’ve come in the 50 years since Balfour Mount and Sue Britton opened the first palliative care at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Quebec, have we lost something along the way?
In today’s podcast we welcome some of the early pioneers in palliative care to talk about the roots of palliative care. Sue Britton was the first nurse hired on that palliative care unit. Michael Kearney on a transformational meeting in Cicely Saunders’s office, with Balfour Mount at her side and a glass of sherry. Justin Sanders wants to be sure the newer generations of palliative care clinicians understand the early principles and problems that animated the founders of hospice and palliative care, including:
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Origins of the word “palliative” - it’s not what I thought! Yes, it means “to cloak,” but there’s more…
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Whole-person-care
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Healing as a process distinct from the deterioration of the body
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The patient and family as the unit of care
Our guests referenced many articles on this podcast, linked above and below. If you read just one, read Palliative Medicine - Just Another Specialty? by Kearney. I promise it’s short. 2 pages. Here’s a taste:
…While there is an abusive and useless dimension to illness, pain and suffering which needs to be removed if at all possible, there is also potential in such experience…If we in palliative medicine fail to accept this view, a view which allows that there may also be a potential in the suffering of the dying process, if we sell out completely to the literalism of the medical model with its view that such suffering is only a problem, we will be in danger of following a pattern which could significantly limit our scope for development and lead to our becoming ’symptomatologists’, within just another specialty.
And love that Jim Croce choice. What’s in a name? I’ve got a name.
Enjoy!
-Alex Smith
Links
- Link to the McGill National Grand Rounds Series on Palliative Care, Michael Kearney as initial presenter, and registration for future events. No, you don’t need to be Canadian. Canadians are welcoming.
- Palliative Medicine - Just Another Specialty? In Palliative Medicine By Kearney
- Joe Wood’s book on Total Pain
- Balfour Mount’s memoir Ten Thousand Crossroads paper on Healing Connections in JPSM and Healing and Palliative Care in Palliative Medicine
- Cicely Saunders: A Life and Legacy, by David Clark
- Self-Care of Physicians Caring for Patients at the End of Life, by Michael Kearney and colleagues in JAMA Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life series
- Twycross on Readdressing Balance in Hospice