Insomnia. We’ve all had it. Lying in bed at 2 am staring at the ceiling, getting anxious every hour that you’re not falling asleep as you have a busy day coming up. Insomnia sucks.  Chronic insomnia sucks even more. For those with serious illness, sleep problems and insomnia are all too common.  Instead of reflexively jumping to melatonin or ambien, on today's podcast we talk with two sleep experts, Cathy Alessi and Brienne Miner, about a better approach to sleep problems and insomnia. We will go over epidemiology of insomnia, how these experts think about work up including which medications to avoid or discontinue, non-pharmacological treatment such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and what if any is the role of pharmacological therapy in including newer agents like melatonin receptor agonists (ramelteon) and dual orexin receptor antagonists (like suvorexant).

Sleep problems and Insomnia in Serious Illness: A Podcast with Cathy Alessi and Brienne Miner

A geriatrics and palliative care podcast for every health care professional. 

We invite the brightest minds in geriatrics, hospice, and palliative care to talk about the topics that you care most about, ranging from recently published research in the field to controversies that keep us up at night.   You'll laugh, learn and maybe sing along.  Hosted by Eric Widera and Alex Smith. CME available!

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On today’s podcast, we’ve invited four hospice and palliative care social media influencers (yes, that’s a thing!), all of whom focus their efforts on educating the general public about living and dying with a serious illness. Their work is pretty impressive in both reach (some of their posts are seen by millions of viewers) and breadth of work.  We’ve invited:   Julie McFadden (aka Hospice Nurse Julie): Julie is a social media superstar, with 1.5 million subscribers on TikTok, another 400,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, and another 350k followers on Instagram. She covers topics on death, dying, and hospice from a hospice nurse perspective, and she also has a book coming out called “Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully,” which is now available for pre-order.     Matt Tyler (aka Pallidad for those on Twitter): Matt is the Hospice and Palliative care doctor who created How To Train Your Doctor, which helps patients living with serious illness find tips on “owning” their healthcare plan on his Instagram and  YouTube pages.  He was also the one who we have to thank for suggesting this podcast!   Hsien Seow & Samantha (“Sammy”) Winemaker: Hsein and Sammy's goal was to start a revolution with their podcast “The Waiting Room Revolution,” which is now in its 7th season! The hope was by going directly to those living with a life-changing illness, we could directly tackle the question that comes up so many times - “Why didn’t anyone tell me that sooner…”  They also just published a book,” Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest,” and Sammy is a TikTok star in her own right, with some posts having over a million views.    We covered a lot of topics in the podcast from::    What motivated them to create public-facing social media channels?   Why focus on the public rather than other health care providers?   How do they deal with professional barriers and the barrage of comments?   Advice for others who might want to dabble in social media outreach     So, take a listen and check out their social media sites to get inspired. Just don't let Alex make me do another TikTok dance…   Eric Widera  

Public Facing Education via Social Media: A Podcast with Julie McFadden, Matt Tyler, Sammy Winemaker and Hsien Seow

As Betty Ferrell says on our podcast today, nurses play an essential role in care of people with serious illness.  Who spends the most time with the patient in the infusion center? Doing home care? Hospice visits? In the ICU at the bedside?  Nurses. ELNEC (End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium) celebrates it’s 25th anniversary in 2025.  We talk today with Betty Ferrell, who has been a nurse for 47 years, and is the founder and PI of ELNEC. As I argue on the podcast, ELNEC has likely done more to lift the primary palliative care skills of clinicians than any other initiative.  Full stop.  Some numbers to back it up:   ELNEC has trained more than 48,000 providers in a train the trainer model   Over 1.5 million clinicians have been educated in ELNEC    ELNEC curricula are integrated int 1180 undergraduate and 394 graduate Schools of Nursing   ELNEC has been taught in over 100 countries   Today we talk about the origin story of ELNEC, the special role of nurses in palliative care, empowering as well as educating nurses, interprofessional ELNEC training, and opportunities and challenges ELNEC faces over the next 25 years. Enjoy! -@AlexSmithMD  

Palliative Care Nursing: Podcast with Betty Ferrell about ELNEC

Eric asks the question that is on many of our minds - is the future of AI more Skynet from Terminator, in which AI takes over the world and drives humanity to the brink of extinction, or Wall-E, in which a benevolent and empathetic AI restores our humanity? Our guest today is Bob Wachter, Chair of Medicine at UCSF and author of the  Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age.  Bob recently wrote an essay in JAMA on AI and delivered a UCSF Grand Rounds on the same topic.  We discuss, among other things:   Findings that in several studies AI was rated by patients as more empathetic than human clinicians (not less, that isn’t a typo). Turns my concern about lack of empathy from AI on its head - the AI may be more empathetic than clinicians, not less.   Skepticism on the ability of predictive models to transform healthcare   Consolidation of EHR’s into the hands of a very few companies, and potential for the drug and device industry to influence care delivery by tweaking AI in ways that are not transparent and already a sort of magical black box.   AI may de-skill clinicians in the same way that autopilot deskilled pilots, who no longer new how to fly the plane without autopilot   A live demonstration of AI breaking a cancer diagnosis to a young adult with kids (VITAL Talk watch out)   Use cases in healthcare: Bob predicts everyone will use digital scribes to chart within two years   Concerns about bias and other anticipated and unanticipated issues    And a real treat- Bob plays the song for this one!  Terrific rendition of Tomorrow from the musical Annie on piano (a strong hint there about Bob’s answer to Eric’s first question).  Enjoy! -@AlexSmithMD  

The Promise and Pitfalls of AI in Medicine: Bob Wachter

Ambivalence is a tough concept when it comes to decision-making. On the one hand, when people have ambivalence but haven't explored why they are ambivalent, they are prone to bad, value-incongruent decisions. On the other hand, acknowledging and exploring ambivalence may lead to better, more ethical, and less biased decisions. On today's podcast, Joshua Briscoe, Bryanna Moore, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, and Olubukunola Dwyer discuss the challenges of ambivalence and ways to address them. This podcast was initially sparked by Josh’s “Note From a Family Meeting” Substack post titled “Ambivalence in Clinical Decision-Making,” which discussed Bryanna’s and Jenny’s 2022 article titled “Two Minds, One Patient: Clearing up Confusion About Ambivalence." Bryanna’s and Jenny’s article is particularly unique as it discusses these “ambivalent-related phenomena” and that these different kinds of “ambivalence” may call for different approaches with patients, surrogates (and health care providers):  In addition to defining these “ambivalent related phenomena” we ask our guests to cover some of these topics:   Is ambivalence good, bad, or just a normal part of decision-making?   Does being ambivalent mean you don’t care about the decision?   What should we be more worried about in decision-making, ambivalence or the lack thereof?   The concern about resolving ambivalence too quickly, as it might rush past important work that needs to be done to make a good decision.   What about ambivalence on the part of the provider?  How should we think about that?   How do you resolve ambivalence?   Lastly, the one takeaway point from this podcast is that the next time I see ambiguity (or have it myself), I should ask the following question: “I see you are struggling with this decision. Tell me how you are feeling about it.”  

Ambivalence in Decision-Making: A Podcast with Joshua Briscoe, Bryanna Moore, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby & Olubukunola Dwyer

In 1983, a 25 year old Nancy Cruzan was thrown from her car while driving home in Missouri, landing in a water filled ditch. She was resuscitated by EMS, but did not regain higher brain function, and was eventually diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative  state.  In 1988, Cruzan’s parents requested that her feeding tube be removed, arguing that she would not want to continue in this state. The hospital refused without a court order, and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. Arguing for the state of Missouri against the Cruzan’s was  Ken Starr, who would later be assigned the role of special prosecutor in the investigation of the Clintons (Whitewater, Lewensky, etc). In 1990 the Supreme Court ruled…for the state of Missouri.  On the one hand, this was unfortunate, as it meant Nancy Cruzan could not be disconnected from the feeding tube immediately. On the other hand, the ruling allowed states to set their own evidentiary standards to refuse or withdraw life sustaining interventions.  Missouri set a very high bar, explicit written documentation that applies to this specific circumstance, which the Cruzan’s eventually cleared.  Other states set lower bars, including oral assignment of surrogate decision-makers. The Cruzan ruling led to a flood of interest in Advance Directives, and eventually to the Patient Self Determination Act, which mandates provision of information about advanced directives to all hospitalized patients. Today, we talk with Bernie Lo, prominent bioethicist and practicing primary care internist, and Laurie Dornbrand, geriatrician at the IOA On Lok PACE, about the legacy of Nancy Curzan.  We use Bernie’s NEJM Perspective as a springboard for discussion.  We discuss, among other things:   How and why in the 30 years since the Cruzan ruling the emphasis has shifted from advance directive forms to in-the-moment discussions   And validating the importance of the advance directive forms in some circumstances, and in starting conversations   The role of the clinician in engaging patients in advance care planning and in-the-moment serious illness conversation: what questions are important? What words to use?   Is the POLST useful? How? Under what circumstances?    Should we abandon the term, “comfort measures?”   In case you miss the introductions at the start of the podcast, Bernie and Laurie are married, and offer wonderful reminiscence of their clinical practice over the last several decades.  So when Bernie says, “I’ve heard you take these phone calls in the middle of the night, Laurie…” Now you know why! And great song choice: Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell.  Joni suffered a stroke and had to completely  re-learn how to play guitar.  Her comeback performances are inspirational, such as this one at the Newport Folk Festival, attended by another influential GeriPal couple, Sean Morrison and Diane Meier. You get to hear my stripped down Hawaiian slack key style version of Both Sides Now (easy to play with 2 fingers, still in rehab for broken hand, hoping to have full use again soon). Enjoy! -@AlexSmithMD  

Sleep problems and Insomnia in Serious Illness: A Podcast with Cathy Alessi and Brienne Miner

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