The State of COVID19 in Boston: Podcast with Zara Cooper, Rachelle Bernacki, and Ricky Leiter
episode
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
51 min
4 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 6 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the current COVID‑19 situation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana‑Farber?
The JerryPow podcast is brought to you by Archstone Foundation, preparing society and meeting the needs of an aging population. And now, here are your hosts.
Welcome to the Jerry Powell Podcast. This is Eric Quadera. This
is Alex Smith.
And Alex, who is on this call with us? We have a lot of people. We
have a lot of people. First we'll introduce um our other uh guest host, Nasli Abadini, who is a Palet Care Fellow at UCSF. Welcome to Jerry Powell Podcast, Nasley.
Thank you for having me.
And now we will introduce our guests. We have two returning guests from Boston. First we have Rochelle Bernacki, who's director of quality initiatives and palliative care at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham Women's Hospital. Welcome back to the Dare Jerry Pal podcast, Rochelle.
Thank you so much, Alex. That's great to be here. Were you gonna
say Dairy Pal? I think I think Dairy? Yeah,
yeah
Hey
cows need palliative care too. So then uh w also returning, we have Zara Cooper who is director of the Center for Geriatric Surgery at Brigham Women's Hospital. Welcome back to the Jerry Powell podcast, Zara.
Thanks, Alex. It's great to be here.
And first time on the podcast we have Ricky uh Leader, who is a palliative care physician researcher at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Welcome to the JerryPowl podcast, Ricky. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
So uh before we get into the subject at hand, we always start off with a song request. Um who is the song requester, Alex? Uh
Zara is the song request. Zara,
do you have a song for Alex?
I do. I do. I would love it if you could play Lovely Day by Bill Withers.
And wait, could you tell us why you're requesting this song?
I requested the song because unfortunately uh Bill Withers died recently. Um and ever since his death I've listened to this song every morning and it's helped me get a good start to to the day. So
Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm just gonna play a snippet at the beginning and then a little more at the end.
When I wake up in the morning love And the sun it hurts my eyes. And something without wanting love. Was heavy on my mind. Ah, I'm gonna stop there. But we'll get more at the end. Lovely day, lovely day, lovely, lovely day. Great choice. Bill Withers, one of our our favorites in Jerry Pell podcast. We did grandma's hands a few episodes back. Wonderful tunes.
So um uh you know, this is I think like our eighth podcast. We're focused on COVID. And um I'm starting to hear a lot more kind of reports coming out of Massachusetts and Boston. Can you guys just give us like a Heads up, what's what's happening right now out there and um what are you seeing um in your hospital?
Well, um, in Massachusetts we have about thirty two thousand cases and as of this morning we had twelve hundred and forty five deaths. Um, we're one of the top, I think, four states. in terms of cases and deaths, um We all work at Dana F Dana Farber, which is a cancer center, and then a the Brigham, which is a inpatient hospital that has about a thousand beds. Um and today we have 143 confirmed COVID cases and 78 in the ICU and uh 65 persons under investigation or PUIs. Which is odd name. Um, and of those, you know, palliative care is involved in a lot of those. So we've actually done a huge amount of restructuring of our palliative care team. um to sort of meet the needs and um I'm gonna tell a story about Zara.
Um so when we first started when this first started about three or four weeks ago, Zara like instantaneously kind of said, oh my God, this is gonna be really hard. We're not gonna be able to see our patients and families. Like, how are we gonna do this? And I like very blithely said, like, oh, we're gonna be there with you, Zara. We're gonna help you, you know, palliative care is gonna help you shoulder to shoulder. And at the time we literally had no plan and uh like A week or two later, after huge efforts on the part of our team, Jane and Nelia, uh everyone in our palliative care div or department uh sort of reconfigured and Ricky is actually the person that was on service with Zara last week or two weeks ago and was shoulder to shoulder with her taking care of these patients.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the current COVID‑19 situation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana‑Farber?
0:01–5:50
2
How have the ICU and ED palliative‑care teams been restructured to meet COVID‑19 demand?
5:50–11:55
3
What challenges do clinicians face when providing goals‑of‑care discussions via tele‑medicine?
11:55–18:09
4
How are moral distress and ethical dilemmas affecting the palliative‑care team during the surge?
18:09–25:59
5
What strategies are being used to support and train fellows and learners on the front lines?
25:59–33:08
6
How does the team balance early, stronger recommendations with uncertainty in COVID‑19 prognosis?
33:08–39:37
7
What practical tools (apps, guides, protocols) have been created to streamline COVID‑19 palliative care?
39:37–45:56
8
What key lessons and take‑aways can other institutions learn from Boston’s COVID‑19 palliative‑care response?
45:56–51:32
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
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