We, Too
by Abby Rosenberg (@AbbyRosenbergMD)I didn ’t want to be another “me too” story. I am becoming one, now, because I believe in the power of a collective voice.You see, there is something terribly lonely about experiencing sexual harassment. And, there is something incredibly powerful about the quiet moment when you finally, bravely, share your story. There is something bittersweet about knowing you are not alone.Sexual harassment in medicine is common. Over 50% of women medical students experience it before they graduate.(1) Disparities in women ’s salaries, grant-funding, academic rank, and leadership opportunities...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - April 28, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: discrimination harassment rosenberg The profession Source Type: blogs

Confessions of a First Time Presenter
By Kristin Edwards (@KristinMDCT)I ’ve been attending theAnnual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care (AAHPM/HPNA) for nearly a decade, but this is the first year I presented a concurrent session. As I return to work, the glow from my 15 minutes of Friday morning fame fading away, I wanted to share a few thoughts for those who, might feel intimidated about submitting an abstract.An abstract can only be accepted if it is submitted.I spent years coming up with ideas for a presentation, but ultimately deciding they were not good enough. A trusted mentor encouraged me to submit my ideas anyway. He saw value in the process ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - April 22, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: AAHPM conference Edwards HPNA Source Type: blogs

A High Level Review of Medical Marijuana
This article isn ’t going to change your practice. Why am I reviewingBraun et al. ’s survey regarding oncologists’ beliefs, practices, and knowledge regarding medical marijuana use? 1. I went to a Willie Nelson concert and my clothes still reek of marijuana; 2. One of my palliative care fellows is interested in understanding Palliative Care clinicians ’ educational needs regarding marijuana; 3. I visited a dispensary in Pennsylvania where I was told medical marijuana treats diseases ranging from opioid addiction to headaches to nausea and vomiting (in pregnant woman). This annoyed me and I wanted to see what other ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - April 14, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: arnold marijuana oncology physician Source Type: blogs

Getting Advocacy Right
by Christian Sinclair (@ctsinclair)Anarticle about end-of-life care has been making the rounds this week by Haider Warraich, MD from the online magazine Vox. Titled, " The way we die will be considered unthinkable 50 years from now " , it is part of a series asking 15 experts to think about how the actions we take now will look like errors in 2070. I have seen people on Facebook and Twitter share it with quotes pulled or superlatives attached. Yet when I read it, I didn ' t feel the same enthusiasm; I felt frustrated.When you read the article, key points seem to be very supportive of palliative care and hospice efforts, bu...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - April 7, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: physician sinclair The profession warraich Source Type: blogs

Palliative Care Social Work: A Year of Leadership
by Vickie Leff(@VickieLeff) and Allie Shukraft(@Alifrumcally)It has been an amazing year for those of us who are palliative care social workers. The4th edition of National Palliative Care Guidelines, published this fall, addingseveral psychosocial focused domains to the list of best care practices.1 Many of the 8 domains specifically highlight the expert skill set of social workers on the interdisciplinary team. Palliative care social workers were delighted to see these highlighted in the guidelines. Palliative Care teams work best when they allow members to practice to the top of their license. Although there is often ove...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - March 30, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: certification leff shukraft social work SWHPN Source Type: blogs

The 2019 Annual Assembly Social Media Recap
by Christian Sinclair (@ctsinclair)The sun and fun of Orlando has come and gone for those of us lucky enough to steal away from our day jobs and attend the Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care. Hopefully everyone learned a lot, got re-energized and found their way back home safely.Thanks to the work of Lori Ruder, (@loriruder), Kristi Newport (@kbnewport), Allie Shukraft (@alifrumcalli) Pallimed was present in force a the meeting through Twitter (@pallimed). Beyond recapping some sesisons and re-tweeting the best tweets from the meeting we also used a few engagement techniques like #hpmRookie19, #hpmBingo and the...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - March 18, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: conference sinclair twitter Source Type: blogs

Social Media at the 2019 Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care
by Christian Sinclair (@ctsinclair)The Annual Assembly of AAHPM and HPNA is this week and if you are going to Orlando, or staying home to keep things running smoothly, social media can help make your conference experience be transformative. Since 2009, the Assembly has been making use of Twitter to provide additional insight, commentary and sources for the multiple sessions each day. Now things are expanding to dedicated conference apps, Facebook and Instagram. And for the third year in a row, the Tweet of the Day (#hpmTOTD) will bring you the highlights of the conference and #hpmBingo will help make sure you do as mu...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - March 11, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: AAHPM conference HPNA sinclair social media social work SWHPN Source Type: blogs

Decision-Making in the ICU - The Problem Is Us
byDrew Rosielle (@drosielle)Annals of Internal Medicine has published a fascinating trial of a web-based surrogate decision-making tool aimed at improving decisions for patients receiving prolonged mechanical ventilation in an ICU.It ' s one of the most fascinating trials I ' ve read in a long time, and also somewhat of a monster (in size/scope of data presented) - there are 4, lengthy online supplements attached to it (!), which is daunting, and so I ' m mostly just going to write here about what I find most interesting about it.Which is that I think this may be the trial which should convince us all that what ' s ' wrong...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - March 10, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: advance care planning annals of internal medicine communication hospital icu journal article prognosis rosielle The profession Source Type: blogs

2019 #hpmParty - The 13th Annual Pallimed - GeriPal Party
by Christian SinclairThe Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care is only a week away, and it is time to announce the details for the 13th Annual Pallimed-GeriPal Party!Just so you all know from here to eternity, the answer to the question of " When is the Pallimed-GeriPal party? " is Thursday night at 9pm local time the week of the Annual Assembly of Hospice and Palliative Care (but just to be clear it is not an official part of the meeting). We love meeting other hospice and palliative care clinicians and advocates, so feel free to invite and bring any colleagues or new friends with you as this is not an exclusive ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - March 5, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Source Type: blogs

Introversion and Hospice & Palliative Care: Insights from ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain
by Ben Skoch (@skochb)I made some interesting observations during my first ever trip to the AAHPM National Assembly in Boston, almost a year ago. It seemed to me that I was not the only one favoring my phone screen over introducing myself to hundreds of new people. My new Twitter follower to friends IRL ratio ( ‘In Real Life,’ for those wondering) was about 25:1. I noticed people often trying to find seats in a lecture hall at least a few spaces away from others, to a point where some rooms looked like those old science problems involving the diffusion of a gas.I wondered to myself how many people here are introverts l...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - February 20, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Source Type: blogs

Goodbye to Compounded Analgesic Creams
This study is one of the largest and best-designed study I ' m aware of of these creams, and the findings are pretty clear: such creams benefit patients via placebo mechanisms, aka they don ' t work.Note that there is a separate body of research on some other topicals which should not be confused with this study. Eg, the 5% lidocaine patch for post-herpetic neuralgia, topical capsaicin for a variety of neuropathies, and at least some topical NSAIDs for osteoarthritis, and topical opioids. I ' m not broadly endorsing those either - it ' s complicated - however they weren ' t tested here and the take home point is we should ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - February 11, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Source Type: blogs

A Randomized Controlled Trial for Fan Therapy in Dyspnea
by Bob Arnold (@rabob)Winter suits me just fine since I do not like heat. I have a lot of sympathy for patients with chronic obstructive lung disease who do not have an air conditioner during the summer. I am told that there is nothing worse than sitting in hot, humid weather and not being able to breathe.As a palliative care physician, I love fans. When my patients are short of breath and opiates do not work (1,2) I send their families down to the local ACE hardware store to buy a hand-held fan. Therefore, I was excited tosee an article in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management on fan therapy being effective in treati...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - January 11, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: arnold dyspnea journal article JPSM Source Type: blogs

Grieving with Mr. Pickles: Thoughts on Showtime ’s ‘Kidding’
by Christine Bridges“I don’t think I could stand to be around that much death. All that sadness!” When I announced my career change and plan for a Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM) fellowship the reaction of most, in healthcare or not, was concern for my emotional wellbeing. Internally my initial response was : 1. Why do people think that death is reserved for HPM alone? and 2. Death and grief are all around, they are a part of life.Perhaps it is my current vocation, but it seems that modern media agrees. Death and grief are showing up in unexpected formats. Most recently the new ‘dramedy’ on Showtime, ‘Kid...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - January 8, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Source Type: blogs

First Ever Medical Humanities Chat (#MedHumChat)
Hey#medtwitter, I'm toying with the idea of starting a narrative medicine twitter chat. each week we discuss a poem, essay, short story (something very brief!) relevant to medicine and our experience. Would folks be interested? Would you participate? Does this already exist?— Colleen Farrell, MD (@colleenmfarrell)December 16, 2018by Christian Sinclair (@ctsinclair)What started off as a spontaneous tweet by resident Colleen Farrell, MD (@colleenmfarrell) generated a swell of interest from the health care Twitter community and now is being fully realized with the first Medical Humanities chat on Twitter (#MedHumCha...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - January 2, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: arts humanities sinclair tweetchat twitter Source Type: blogs

Writing a Book
by Robert MacauleyI could write a book about that …But do I really want to? That ’s the question I asked myself a few years ago, when I was invited by Oxford University Press to submit a formal proposal for a comprehensive book on the ethics of palliative care. So I reached out to mentors for advice, and they all said the same thing: Enlist twenty of your friends to each write a chapter, and you can be the editor.Sage advice, which I didn ’t take. Partly because I like challenges. Partly because I don’t really like the unevenness of multi-author texts. And partly because I drastically underestimated how much time a...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - January 1, 2019 Category: Palliative Care Tags: ethics macauley The profession writing Source Type: blogs