#028 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Andy Baxter, the founder of the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation. The Foundation is named in honor of Andy's wife, Carley, who died of breast cancer in 2005, as well as in honor of her physician, Dr. Peter S. Dixon. The mission of the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation is to enrich the Doctor-Patient relationship near the end of life by fostering human development in medicine and supporting and funding projects relating to Palliative Care. I...

#027 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews neurosurgeon and writer Dr. Jody Stern. Jody discusses his recently released book, Grief Connects Us, which was inspired by his sister Victoria's illness and death from leukemia as well as his brother in law Pat's death from a ruptured aneurysm. Jody speaks candidly about how these experiences changed him as both a person and as a surgeon. He reflects upon the importance of emotional agility and the challenges of practicin...

#026 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she once again has the privilege of interviewing Dr. Balfour Mount, the founder of Palliative Medicine. Bal recently released his 500-page memoir entitled Ten Thousand Crossroads: The Path as I Remember It and he generously returns to the show to talk about his book. He discusses his friendships with both Dame Cicely Saunders and Elizabeth Kubler Ross and shares lessons he learned from both women. He also reflects upon the many...

#025 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Drs. Buddy Marterre and Pringl Miller, whom - along with Red - founded the recently launched Surgical Palliative Care Society (SPCS), the first inter-disciplinary society dedicated to the integration of high quality palliative medicine into the care of surgical patients. They discuss the origins of the society, review its mission and talk about how Buddy's work as a beekeeper inspired the non-hierarchical approach to the creation of our...

#024 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Patricia Murphy. Pat is a nurse and is recently retired as the Clinical Clinical Ethicist at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. She is an associate professor in the Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School Department of Surgery and served as a member of the New Jersey Bioethics Commission, the multidisciplinary body that developed the Advance Directive and Brain Death legislation in New Jersey. She is responsible for teacher...

#023 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews pharmacist Dr. Mary Lynn McPherson, Professor and Executive Director of the Advanced Post-Graduate Education in Palliative Care in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science at the University of Maryland, Program Director of the Online Master of Science and Graduate Certificates in Palliative Care (also at University of Maryland), host of the Palliative Care Chat Podcast and author of the very well-known book Demystifying Opi...

#022 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Dan Hinshaw, professor emeritus of surgery and palliative care consultant at University of Michigan. Dan discusses how his wife's work with HIV positive veterans first led him to contemplate the nature of suffering and spirituality. He shares how his surgical training has made him a more effective palliative care doctor and how his palliative care training made him feel like a "complete surgeon." Dan offers practi...

#021 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Rebecca Aslakson, an anesthesiologist - triple-board certified in anesthesiology, critical care medicine and hospice and palliative medicine - and a well known researcher who has devoted her career to improving the delivery of effective and equitable palliative care, particularly to perioperative and critically ill populations. Rebecca is an Associate Professor at Stanford University with appointments in both the Department of Prim...

#020 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Preeti John, a surgeon triple board-certified in general surgery, surgical critical care and hospice and palliative medicine. Preeti currently practices at the VA Maryland Healthcare System in Baltimore and is the Facility LSTDI (Life Sustaining Treatment Decisions Initiative) Director, coordinating all aspects of this Veterans Health Administration's quality improvement initiative in the in-patient and out-patient settings and inte...

#019 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Janet Bull, chief medical officer of Four Seasons, a Hospice and Palliative Medicine organization in Western North Carolina. Janet began her career as an obstetrician-gynecologist. After witnessing the illness and death of a close friend, she left her practice and eventually began volunteering at Four Seasons. Janet was instrumental in starting the Palliative Care program at Four Seasons as well as the Clinical Research...

#018 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Nancy Glass, who worked as a professor of both Anesthesiology and Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine as well as the Director of Pediatric Pain Management at Texas Children's Hospital. She now is the Associate Medical Director of Houston Hospice. Nancy was able to seamlessly integrate her training in pediatrics, pediatric critical care, pain management, anesthesiology and hospice and palliative medicine into the care of t...

#017 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman and cohost Dr. Pringl Miller as they interview Dr. Geoff Dunn, the father of the Surgical Palliative Care Movement. Geoff is a fourth generation surgeon, a second generation hospice medical director (his father was also both a surgeon and a hospice medical director!) and an artist. Along with Dr. Bob Milch, Geoff is responsible for starting the integration of the concept of palliative medicine into the work of the American College of Surgeons (ACS...

#016 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Rick Greene, a surgical oncologist and a champion of palliative care for surgical oncology patients. Rick currently serves as the medical director of the Cancer Data Registry at the Levine Cancer Institute in North Carolina. As a past president (and founding member) of SAGES, past president of the Southeastern Surgical Society, past chair of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer, past chair of the American Join...

#015 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Anne Mosenthal, a trauma surgeon and one of the founding members of the American College of Surgeon's Surgical Palliative Care Task Force (now the Committee on Surgical Palliative Care, which she currently chairs). Her name is synonymous with surgical palliative care in this country. Anne, along with nurse Pat Murphy, wrote some of the earliest papers about how to incorporate palliative care into the surgical and trauma ...

#014 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Drs. Kate Aberger and David Wang, emergency medicine physicians who specialize in palliative care. They are the editors of the recently released book, "Palliative Skills for Frontline Physicians," a collection of case-based vignettes which illustrate how to practically integrate palliative care into all fields of medicine, including surgery, emergency medicine, internal medicine and critical care, among others. David and Kate disc...

#013 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Gretchen Schwarze, a vascular surgeon, medical ethicist and prolific researcher known for her work focused on surgical buy-in and the best case/worst case scenario. Gretchen is an endowed professor in the Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery, at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She completed a fellowship in medical ethics at the MacLean Center for Medical Ethics. She is a n...

#012 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Jack M. Zimmerman, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon who served as the chief of surgery at Church Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland and as an associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins. Jack first developed his interest in surgical palliation during his surgical residency, when he learned of the Souttar, a tube meant to help patients with esophageal cancer. He then went on to start one of the very first hospice programs in ...

#011 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she speaks with surgeons Drs. Sara Scarlet, Pringl Miller and Kim Kopecky about surgical ethics, particularly those surrounding Do Not Resuscitate Orders in the operating room. All three completed a fellowship in medical ethics and Drs. Miller and Kopecky are also fellowship-trained in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Dr. Scarlet served as the co-editor of the April 2020 issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics which focused on the relationship betwe...

#010 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she joins the long-running GeriPal Podcast to discuss all things surgical palliative care. As is the tradition on the GeriPal podcast, Red gets serenaded by GeriPal co-hosts Drs. Eric Widera and Alex Smith, along with guest co-host Dr. Joe Lin. They then go on to chat about the definition of surgical palliative care, the importance of building relationships between surgeons and palliative care providers and the common misconceptions that both d...

#009 - Join host Dr. Red Hoffman as she interviews Dr. Ira Byock, nationally known author and speaker and the founder and chief medical officer of the Institute for Human Caring at Providence St. Joseph in Southern California. Ira served as the president of the American Association of Hospice and Palliative Medicine as well as the Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Promoting Excellence in End of Life Care, under which the Surgeons Palliative Care task force (now the Commit...