What are we still missing when service members come home “intact” on paper but feel amputated in spirit? We sit down with Rachel Howard, a 14‑year Army National Guard combat medic, purple heart recipient, VA program developer, and now U.S. Senate candidate, to trace a path from convoy medicine and CBRN readiness to building one of the first VA post‑deployment respiratory clinics, where patients had real symptoms and “normal” tests. The common theme is service: how identity forms under pressure, why it fractures after discharge, and what it takes to stitch purpose back together.

Rachel breaks down what combat medics actually do, the messy overlap between emergency response and daily primary care needs, and the hidden exposures veterans face: from burn pits to sandstorms and solvents. Our “Quality Questions” segment arms pre‑health listeners with an interview‑ready mindset: listen first, map patterns, and navigate uncertainty without dismissing patients.

Then comes the major pivot: why Rachel left a job she loved to run for office, and why healthcare leaders must shape policy before policy breaks care. Boots‑on‑ground voices understand trade‑offs, workflow, and consequences in a way white papers rarely capture. If you care about veterans’ health, diagnostic blind spots, and smarter healthcare policy, this conversation offers practical insight and a challenge to lead where you stand.

Enjoy the episode? Subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show. Got thoughts or questions? Message us on Instagram or Facebook and join the conversation.

Connect with Rachel Howard: Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn | Website

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Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

What if AI could run every clinical protocol and you (the clinician) still felt more essential than ever? We sit down with Dr. Chris Seitz (board-certified in emergency medicine, licensed in all 50 states, and now CEO of Guardian Medical Direction) to rethink how modern care is built, supervised, and scaled. From trauma bays to telehealth, Chris shares why the “medicine is the medicine,” and how a functional, personalized mindset can live inside algorithm-driven environments without losing rigor.

We dig into the oversight gap that stops many great ideas at the door. Outside the hospital, nurses, PAs, and NPs hit a maze of state-by-state rules on ownership, supervision, and scope.

The future theme is clear: let AI handle the checklist work while humans do the healing work. For students and early-career clinicians, we offer a challenge worth writing down: if AI runs the pathways, what unique value will you bring? Learn the business basics now, notice where presence beats memorization, and design a career that restores your craft.

If this conversation sparked a new way to see your role in healthcare, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review with the one moment that changed how you think about your value.

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

What does it really take to last in medicine?

In this episode of Shadow Me Next, I sit down with Johnnie Gilpen, a veteran, first responder, and pediatric emergency medicine PA whose path into medicine was anything but linear. Told multiple times that he would never get into PA school, Johnnie shares how resilience, relationships, and reflection shaped a decades-long journey that ultimately led him into leadership, education, and service.

This conversation explores not just how to get into medicine, but how to stay human once you’re there.

Connect with Johnnie : Instagram | Amazon

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

What if the moment that wrecked your plan ended up shaping your purpose?

Follow Dr. Shanea Clancy along the real (and difficult) road to forensic nursing, starting with a fatal EMS tragedy, two jobs, an accelerated program, and the choice to keep going when quitting felt easier. This isn’t a glossy success story. It’s grit, structure, and a deep belief that no one can take your education away.

We learn about forensic nursing beyond TV: trauma-informed care, mental health and addiction, chart reviews, death investigations, and what it actually means to serve as an expert witness. Dr. Clancy also reframes addiction in a way that might surprise you and challenges how we think about control, coping, and responsibility.

If you’re a student or early in your career, there’s a lot here for you. We talk about finding mentors when you didn’t grow up with access, asking better shadowing questions, and staying coachable so doors can open. And we get into her mountaineering mindset: why resilience isn’t just pushing harder, but knowing when to reset so you don’t burn out on the climb.

Connect with Dr. Shanea Clancy: Website | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

What if heart attacks weren’t a surprise? Dr. Jeffrey Boone of Boone Heart Institute shows how imaging plus modern meds can make heart disease optional. Bold claim, big data. Listen and tell us: would you get scanned before symptoms?

Connect with Dr. Boone

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BooneHeartInstitute
• Instagram: @booneheartinstitute
• TikTok: @booneheart
• LinkedIn: Boone Heart Institute
• Website https://www.booneheart.com/

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

What if medicine chooses you before you choose it?

In this episode of Shadow Me Next, I sit down with Roberts Essex, a seasoned physician assistant who chose to speak under a pen name so he could tell his story honestly. He is a veteran PA with decades across emergency medicine, hospital medicine, and public health, to unpack a life shaped by faith, service, and the quiet power of human connection. Writing under a pen name to protect sensitive details, he shares the personal journey behind his memoir, Chance Beginnings, and the lessons he wants the next generation to carry forward.

We discuss the moments that form a clinician’s core: learning to listen like a detective, making contact in a world that forgot how to touch during COVID, and finding purpose when the system feels indifferent. Roberts traces the evolution of the PA role from “scut work” to frontline leadership, explains where resistance still shows up (from pharmacy boards to professional associations) and makes a case for partnership over rivalry with physician colleagues. His take on burnout is both candid and compassionate: reflect, pray, keep going one patient at a time, or step back if you must; wisdom is knowing which season you are in.

The conversation also tackles the controversial PA title change and why words can either open doors or trigger unnecessary fights. Roberts urges us to be known by outcomes, trust, and presence, not branding alone. We close with practical steps for students and clinicians: answer the “quality question” about your past with insight instead of denial, get involved in policy where it affects patient access, and use storytelling to sharpen empathy and teach what can’t be scripted.

Subscribe, share with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review with your take: title or impact, which matters more and why?

Roberts Exxes book Chance Beginnings is available on Amazon.

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

Sleepless nights rarely start in the bedroom. They usually begin with a racing mind, a tender story, or a belief we’re afraid to say out loud. We sit down with Dr. Benjamin Long, a dual board certified sleep medicine physician and pediatrician, military doctor, and author, to explore how real rest happens when data meets dignity and treatment meets presence.

We trace Dr. Long's journey from a 12-year-old who dreamed of pediatrics to a resident whose sleep rotation “clicked” and changed his career. He detilas the inner workings of sleep medicine: interpreting home tests and in-lab polysomnography, spotting pediatric apnea from a shaky phone video, and guiding exhausted parents through evidence-based behavioral tools. Beyond the monitors, he shows why the most common insomnia profile is the overthinker and how sleep deprivation rewires the brain (dimming the prefrontal cortex while turning up the amygdala) making focus sink and emotions swell.

What makes this conversation different is how Dr. Long integrates meaning into medicine. He takes a simple spiritual history (Is spirituality or religion important in your daily life?) in order to understand the patient’s inner world. That single question can surface existential worry, religious trauma, or grief that keeps people awake. We compare modern “clock in, clock out” systems with the relational roots of care, and hear vivid stories from military medicine that brought community pediatrics back to life: neighbors at the door, newborns on the dining table, trust built one late-night knock at a time.

If anxiety scripts your nights, you’ll leave with a practical tool: scheduled worry time. Set a daily, non-bedroom window to write every concern, expect a brief spike in worries, and retrain your mind over four to six weeks to save rumination for that container. Ben’s Sleep Habits Journal weaves medical strategies with reflective prompts to help anyone—faith-oriented or not—calm an overactive mind and reclaim rest.

Join us for a clear, compassionate guide to better sleep, smarter habits, and the courage to listen to what your insomnia is trying to say. If this conversation helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find it.

To connect with Dr. Benjamin Long, MD, please check out:

Instagram – thewholeheartedmd

TikTok – thewholeheartedmd

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-long-md-6384b8257/

thewholeheartedmd.com

https://www.SleepHabitsJournal.com/

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.

The quietest lifesaving moments often happen between a slammed door and a deep breath. We sit down with crisis mental health clinician and SWAT negotiator Jessi Beyer to unpack what it really takes to bring a volatile scene down, earn trust in minutes, and move someone from danger toward safety. Jessie works nights alongside law enforcement on 911 calls involving suicidal ideation, psychosis, and severe substance use, and she opens up about the tools that work when nothing else seems to.

You’ll hear how a winding path from vet school to EMT to graduate studies in trauma and terrorism shaped a clinician who knows her lane and thrives in it. Jessi breaks down tips for de‑escalation you can use anywhere: matching tone without escalating, reflecting the exact pain under the behavior, and delivering the one line that can drop someone from a ten to a six. We talk about realistic definitions of success in crisis care, why “alive tonight” is often the right metric, and how clean handoffs and community resources reduce reliance on emergency rooms and revolving-door hospitalizations.

We also confront a blind spot: up to 75% of people who die by suicide see a primary care clinician within a year. Jessi offers practical, time‑smart suicide screening questions any clinician can use, along with ways to sit in discomfort and listen without rushing to fix. And for trauma survivors who don’t thrive with talk therapy, we explore evidence‑supported alternatives like dance/movement therapy, canine- and equine-assisted work, and ecotherapy, drawing from Jessi's book on natural therapies.

If you’re a clinician, student, or curious listener, this conversation delivers actionable skills, candid stories, and a humane framework for care under pressure. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review to tell us which de‑escalation tip you’ll try this week.

Connect with Jessi Beyer at:

Website: https://jessibeyerinternational.com/

Instagram: @itsjessibeyer

Support the show

Please connect and say hello >>> Email me!

Support shadow me next >>> Thank you!

Want to be a guest? >>> Click here!

Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. Whether as a doctor, a physician assistant, a therapist or nurse, here Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and understand your place in medicine.