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Deprescribing at the End of Life: Jennifer Tjia, Jon Furuno, Simon Mooijaart

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Release Date: 02/26/2026

Navigating Organ Donation Discussions: Toby Campbell, Nikole Neidlinger, Samantha Taylor

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

While we have previously discussed t, we have yet to explore the complex landscape families face regarding organ donation. In this episode, we dive into the nuances of Donation after Brain Death (DBD) and Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD), and clarify the essential role of healthcare providers who are not part of an organ procurement organization. In this episode of the GeriPal Podcast, we step into a space in serious illness care that is often misunderstood, overlooked, or reduced to a simple "call the organ donation network" checklist item. Joining us are three experts to help us...

Dermatology in Older Adults (GeriDerm): Daniel Butler and Eleni Linos

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In this episode of the GeriPal podcast, we dive into the fascinating world of geriatric dermatology, or “GeriDerm,” with two exceptional guests: and . First, we tackle the big question: how do we keep our skin healthy as we age? I see this on a daily basis with my own skin, but I’m unsure what to do about it, including whether we all need to use sun protection and moisturizers, and if so, which ones? Then we explore the lag time to benefit in dermatology by examining whether we need to treat every actinic keratosis and basal cell carcinoma aggressively, or whether...

GeriPal Live from Sao Paulo! Eduardo Ferriolli, Marlon Aliberti, & Edison Iglesias

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Eric and I were delighted to be invited to Brazil to give a series of presentations in Sao Paulo at their annual geriatrics meeting. We met people doing important, interesting, and innovative work in Brazil and throughout Latin America. We got the audience to sing along, including (in another talk) the magnificent Brazilian song . For our final talk, a podcast in front of a live conference audience, we asked our 3 guests, Eduardo Ferriolli, Marlon Aliberti, & Edison Iglesias to select a recent article to discuss. We talked about: (selected by Eduardo). What is it? What...

400th Episode Celebration: Ask Us Anything, Hot Ones-style

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Lynn Flint and Anne Kelly join as hosts in a reprise of last year’s ask us anything format. Thank you for sending in your terrific questions! Lynn and Anne condensed them to about 20, and we ran through them rather rapid fire. Also on fire? Our mouths. As with our 300th episode, we did this . Every few questions, we had to eat a chicken wing slathered in hot sauce. The hot sauces got progressively hotter, though as we discovered, the ordering may have been a littttttle bit off. Still, by the time we hit the really hot ones, our mouths were on fire, we were...

Rural Palliative Care: Karl Bezak, Jeanie Youngwerth, Adie Goldberg, and Gregg Vandekieft

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Rural populations in the United States face unique healthcare challenges. These communities tend to be older, have higher mortality rates, and experience higher rates of chronic conditions and physical disabilities compared to urban populations. Despite the increased need for palliative care in rural areas, access remains alarmingly limited. Even in hospital settings, where palliative care programs are more common in urban areas, only 35% of rural hospitals report having such programs, compared to 81% of urban hospitals. In this week’s podcast, we explore the challenges and opportunities of...

Pragmatic Trial to Increase Advance Care Planning: Anne Walling, Neil Wenger, & Rebecca Sudore

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Today we’re delighted to talk with Anne Walling, Neil Wenger, and Rebecca Sudore about a pragmatic implementation trial aimed at increasing advance care planning for primary care patients with serious illness in University of California clinics, published in . Seriously ill primary care patients were identified using structured data fields (meaning routinely captured without needing to read the chart or use natural language processing). This study focused on patients without a completed advance directive or POLST form. This was a 3 arm trial that tested a nudge in the patient portal and a...

CMS's Age-Friendly Hospital Measure: Julia Adler-Milstein, Stephanie Rogers, and Shari Ling

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

In 2025, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began requiring hospitals participating in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) program to report on a new “Age-Friendly Hospital Measure.” The hope is that, by attesting to this measure, hospitals will develop evidence-based processes to improve care for older adults in hospital settings. On this week's podcast, we explore this new measure with Sheri Ling, CMS’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer serving in the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ). We’ve also invited some returning guests from our past...

De-intensify Anti-Hypertensives for Nursing Home Residents? Athanase Benetos and Mike Steinman

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

A few weeks ago, I was skimming this paper for UCSF’s Division of Geriatrics Journal club on de-prescribing anti-hypertensive medications for older adults in nursing homes. Seemed to make a world of sense. The found no difference between the deprescribing arm and the usual care arm in mortality, the primary study outcome. I thought, great! So we can deprescribe anti-hypertensives without changing mortality, that must be what the authors concluded. I was shocked, therefore, to read in the first paragraph of the discussion that the deprescribing arm did not achieve the hypothesized 25%...

Alzheimer's Definitions, Biomarkers, and Antibodies: Halima Amjad, Barak Gaster, and Heather Whitson

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

It’s an era of breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s research, yet for many clinicians, it’s also a time of profound uncertainty. We are currently navigating competing definitions of the disease, multiple new biomarkers coming on market seemingly every week, and the clinical rollout of new amyloid antibodies. How do we translate this rapid-fire science into daily practice? On this week’s GeriPal podcast, we sit down with dementia experts , , and . We dive deep into: The evolving definitions of Alzheimer’s disease. Does someone have Alzheimer's disease if you have only an abnormal...

Leadership, Quality, and the Future of Hospice: Guests Chris Comeaux and Cordt Kassner

GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast

Today we’re doing something different. Today, dear listeners, you get two podcasts for the price of one! (OK, our podcasts are both free, but you get the idea). We’re joined today by Chris Comeaux, host of , a podcast about leadership, strategy, innovation, and the future of serious illness care, and author of . We are also joined by TCN Talks’ frequent guest host Cordt Kassner, CEO of , which provides in depth data on hospice quality, utilization, and access, and publisher of , a daily email about the hottest stories and news in the field. This is an “ask us anything” style podcast...

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Philippe Pinel remarked in 1800 that “It is an art of no little importance to administer medicines properly, but it is an art of much greater and more difficult acquisition to know when to suspend or altogether to omit them.” This insight remains profoundly relevant today, especially in hospice care, where inappropriate prescribing is a common issue. Studies show that 20%–70% of hospice patients receive at least one unnecessary medication near the end of life, including drugs like antihypertensives, statins, and vitamins.

In this episode of the GeriPal Podcast, we tackle the pressing topic of deprescribing at the end of life with expert guests Jennifer Tjia, Jon Furuno, and Simon Mooijaart. The conversation focuses on identifying medications that should almost always be discontinued—such as statins, osteoporosis meds, finasteride, and vitamins, which offer minimal benefit for patients with limited life expectancy. We also delve into more nuanced cases, such as antithrombotics, which present complex decisions that challenge clinicians, particularly when prognosis spans the many weeks to months range.

Finally, we explore practical strategies for engaging patients and families in deprescribing conversations. Our guests highlight tools such as the FRAME mnemonic (Focus on the goals of care, Review current medications, Assess each medication’s risk/benefit, Minimize the medication burden, and Evaluate regularly) and the Goal Concurrent Prescribing tool, which helps ensure medication decisions align with patients’ values and end-of-life priorities.

By: Eric Widera

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