Rachael Bedard: A Geriatric Physician and Champion for Patients Without a Voice
· 43 min
Episode Rachael Bedard: A Geriatric Physician and Champion for Patients Without a Voice
Above is a brief video snippet from our conversation. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify.
Transcript with links to audio and external citations
Eric Topol (00:06):
Well, hello it's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I'm really delighted to welcome Dr. Rachael Bedard, who is a physician geriatrician in New York City, and is actually much more multidimensional, if you will. She's a writer. We're going to go over some of her recent writings. She's actually quite prolific. She writes in the New Yorker, New York Magazine, New York Times, New York Review of Books. If it has New York in front of it, she's probably writing there. She's a teacher. She works on human rights, civil rights, criminal justice in the prison system. She's just done so much that makes her truly unique. That's why I really wanted a chance to meet her and talk with her today. So welcome, Rachael.
Rachael Bedard (00:52):
Thank you, Dr. Topol. It's an honor to be here.
Eric Topol (00:55):
Well, please call me Eric and it's such a joy to have a chance to get acquainted with you as a person who is into so many different things and doing all of them so well. So maybe we'd start off with, because you're the first geriatrician we've had on this podcast.
Practicing Geriatrics and Internal Medicine
Eric Topol (01:16):
And it’s especially apropos now. I wanted maybe to talk about your practice, how you got into geriatrics, and then we'll talk about the piece you had earlier this summer on aging.
Rachael Bedard (01:32):
Sure. I went into medicine to do social justice work and I was always on a funny interdisciplinary track. I got into the Mount Sinai School of Medicine through what was then called the Humanities and Medicine program, which was an early acceptance program for people who were humanities focused undergrads, but wanted to go into medicine. So I always was doing a mix of politics and activist focused work, humanities and writing, that was always interested in being a doctor. And then I did my residency at the Cambridge Health Alliance, which is a social medicine program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my chief residency there.
(02:23):
I loved being an internist, but I especially loved taking care of complex illness and I especially loved taking care of complex illness in situations where the decision making, there was no sort of algorithmic decision-making, where you were doing incredibly sort of complex patient-centered shared decision making around how to come up with treatment plans, what the goals of care were. I liked taking care of patients where the whole family system was sort of part of the care team and part of the patient constellation. I loved running family meetings. I was incredibly lucky when I was senior resident and chief resident. I was very close with Andy Billings, who was one of the founders of palliative care and in the field, but also very much started a program at MGH and he had come to work at Cambridge Hospital in his sort of semi-retirement and we got close and he was a very influential figure for me. So all of those things conspired to make me want to go back to New York to go to the Sinai has an integrated geriatrics and palliative care fellowship where you do both fellowships simultaneously. So I came to do that and just really loved that work and loved that medicine so much. There was a second part to your question.
Eric Topol (03:52):
Is that where you practice geriatrics now?
Rachael Bedard (03:55):
No, now I have ever since finishing fellowship had very unusual practice settings for a geriatrician. So right out of fellowship, I went to work on Rikers Island and then New York City jail system, and I was the first jail based geriatrician in the country, which is a sort of uncomfortable distinction because people don't really like to think about there being a substantial geriatric population in jails. But there is, and I…
Links in the notes 17
- https://www.youtube.com/@EricTopolSRTI
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/I3lmoyo09t4wDNEXZGEZ4Cv0BEu1yIAKRicgP258Uqe8mBu2Daz3yl-28t3_bzRrhGXDuEiA7xV6vbs4fPQGjskLBNo?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=6.93
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/Cocvf3qbV67Me3sSYzRqPx3KfPMV4PCYHl0MnIiGHiFyNdJ_2UnpH5Xx8AMD3xBoh0T-_CjMtr6kEqmTKOGhWJyIZw8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=52.32
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/pkcc34kHClNdmoJVGfKv9FihKTnRe6Jh8hC2rZnw_3950l-CntORVCL5r2M1ndoDNSvZGk5e7CrWD6-yoWEAw5V8QDE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=55.14
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/OnlD2dr_5hpMy_IkwEDvaJmLV4qkOzh85P7fRAEskZaqury0OL0p-KB4hfc4R2BV5MmPMdD03sHRlvpILRPfrj9y8dM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=76.68
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/6Le8lGp-P-Fh0Xk5rFxHpwaF6ym2yDgINr2Eq2EwCIMm3q97y6i_fuwjzTIcNuY1FX7w-58kaDNlbxx7NUqCp-8cKjE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=92.79
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/hGGGe8XiEWkIQRbDZvDgT5f5XprSanFSd0SlHcu0d6losHNitjLMPJrRNJ_VvYHtUUfblxwBZ_GICvXHjSjOoVsJPmI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=143.28
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/5a_bdwwAGyASD6n_ERpWaG1AU9hgNe3tIFu6lYHNfFcdH-wHfir8vl-NbkQ26fgs11lnNUMm6jEUBkZAgUPwJUfX8EY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=232.06
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/lG0fTYsOI34_SYs1sG8gqxRYaAjyzAP0w4me4ngv7RXTKH75AO4bqk5EoWHhZsHcGfGeAhPPIO5y68YXjcyLpUM-1ug?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=235.96
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/Y7S747ASrCu0iBaovUKIJ-URORdnH1PNB7MlhhyjAq6CANBGSWgQGidv5uhRz1sik2VrqnlGXgJ7fJYrrzok21oXMvI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=295.36
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/on-Eo9VCR8HaetbPJEf8W8WyMX9EV0LOT4sMINBJhq569Ow20dbvOi9OMPwrbPwvR13L7zOvAMCeuPD5hmpIampW7x8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=354.16
- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/05/opinion/biden-age-health.html
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/CJxqw4U97UhaMo9_LK3P-0FbQzcf-hI7FCabFr6F0_c0ER7ZhA3JXn9bnInObpRNvW3f7XQ8g8ZiZwbDoahhi_Qc6vs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=411.5
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/i4zMSJtx_LuvWaZPH-j6CRbLjlpMdodrc9DPZBb1szmPRdAuLunaAU6j9mahb3xaCtZTAcUh5w1Q5F6s911JA8KxQM0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=456.74
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/5p5rdiIrpWL9afiKoUmAAt7pjtaT3dEfnm5y9wToY2qV6zJ85YgOJOfEm39frEH88lRkXpeGpV5tSgsuIBAEjPb6QQQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=469.82
- https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/mAbsJ3zsXUoLTKbVliF4ET3QBuTHB0jVfSq3gXzvgQ1ivfNncnN5en3k8vvjVGbRvd4CIq2TYSNfFqrqoYbtG8DxmIg?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=544.56
- https://erictopol.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4
Transcript
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