Literature Review

The power of the patient’s voice: Enhancing end-of-life careMedriva, by Ayanna Amadi; 1/31/24End-of-life care is a delicate and complex area of healthcare, requiring a balanced blend of clinical expertise, emotional sensitivity, and communication skills. The End-of-Life Essentials team at Flinders University has created a stirring video titled ‘The Patient’s Perspective,’ focusing on the importance of patient input in improving end-of-life care. The video presents a moving narrative from the vantage point of a patient dealing with serious illness, highlighting the profound impact of healthcare staff interactions.

RCT of Palliative Care for Heart Failure and Lung DiseaseGeriPal Podcast, by Eric Widera, Alex Smith, David Bekelman, Lyndsay DeGroot; 1/25/24In a JAMA 2020 systematic review of palliative care for non-cancer serious illness, Kieran Quinn found ... gaps, including very few studies of patients with lung disease, and little impact of trials on quality of life. The article we discuss today, also published in JAMA, addresses these two gaps. David Bekelman conducted a RCT of a nurse and social worker telephone intervention (ADAPT intervention) for people with heart failure and lung disease (COPD or ILD).

What's the diagnosis of the problem for our hospice and palliative care movementTeleios Podcast, by Chris Comeaux and Ira Byock, MD; 1/17/24Dr. Ira Byock discusses the current state of the hospice industry and the need for major reforms. He emphasizes the importance of acknowledging leaders' responsibility for the crisis in hospice care and apologizing for failures.  Then, the conversation moves toward solutions.

Guiding an improved dementia experience (GUIDE) ModelGeriPal podcast with Malaz Boustani and Diane Ty... The financial case for comprehensive dementia care is changing thanks to a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) alternative payment model (APM) called Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model.  This model will give participating programs a per-member-per-month payment to offer care management, care coordination, and other services such as caregiver training, disease education, and respite.

How medical aid in dying is bringing autonomy to end-of-life decisionsPodcast: 1AHost: Lauren HamiltonWAMU-FM (Washington, DC)/NPRDecember 12, 2023As the American population gets older, people begin to plan for what the end of their lives will look like. It’s a conversation we explored on 1A earlier this year as a part of our ongoing coverage of aging in the United States. And during that conversation, you had a lot of questions for us. ... Since the end of Roe, the debate around bodily autonomy has grown increasingly contentious. 

GeriPal: Redefining Alzheimer’s Disease: A Podcast with Heather Whitson, Jason Karlawish, Lon Schneider.There is a growing push to change how we define Alzheimer’s disease from what was historically a clinically defined syndrome to a newer biological definition based on the presence of positive amyloid biomarkers.