From the Bedside to the Book
Long before Mike was writing books, he was writing protocols.
His career began at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles (CHLA), where he worked as a Pediatric Neurology nurse, researcher, and clinic nurse. It was there, surrounded by children managing complex seizure disorders, that Mike helped establish the clinical protocols for Diastat — a rectal diazepam medication that became a lifeline for families managing pediatric epilepsy at home. Watching parents learn to administer that medication, to trust themselves in a frightening moment, planted an early seed: parents are more capable than they know. They just need the right information.
He carried that belief to the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, where he helped establish the Pediatric Seizure Clinic before returning to CHLA. For eight years, he worked in their Pediatric Emergency Department as a trauma nurse and charge nurse — one of the most demanding, humbling, and clarifying environments in all of medicine.
Twenty-Five Years of Stories
The emergency department has a way of stripping everything down to what matters.
Mike has held the hands of children arriving by helicopter after serious automobile accidents. He has cared for teenagers who survived gunshot wounds and toddlers who swallowed things they shouldn't have. He has also been the calm voice telling a panicked parent that yes, this fever is frightening, but here is what we are going to do, step by step.
"The ER teaches you to meet families exactly where they are," Mike says. "Fear doesn't care how educated you are. A mother who is a physician will cry just as hard as anyone else when it's her child on the stretcher. My job has always been to bring the medicine and the humanity — at the same time."
From CHLA, Mike moved into leadership as Pediatric Emergency Department Nurse Manager at St. Joseph's Hospital in Orange, CA — a facility contracted with Children's Hospital of Orange County to provide emergency services to the surrounding pediatric population. In that role, Mike oversaw the clinical care and admission of ill and injured children while also lending his voice to a larger national conversation about pediatric nursing.
Deeply involved with the State and National Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), Mike served on a committee to establish a dedicated pediatric certification examination for emergency nurses. That work helped secure pediatric emergency nursing's recognition as a distinct national specialty — a quiet legacy that continues to shape how emergency departments staff and train for the youngest patients.
A Different Kind of Practitioner
In 2012, Mike earned his Pediatric Nurse Practitioner certificate from California State University, Long Beach — but he was never interested in becoming a conventional practitioner.
During his training, Mike actively sought out mentors and experiences in alternative and complementary medicine (CAM): naturopathic physicians, integrative pediatricians, and practitioners who understood that the body is not a collection of isolated systems. He wanted to know what traditional Western medicine could do and what it sometimes missed.
The result is a practice philosophy that is genuinely rare. At Growing Healthy Together Pediatric Clinic, Mike works with families to bridge evidence-based pediatric medicine with holistic, naturopathic, and complementary approaches — always anchored by one question: What does this particular child, in this particular family, actually need?
"I've seen parents dismissed for asking about diet, sleep, or environmental triggers," he says. "And I've also seen children put on medications that never got to the root of the problem. I believe we can do better — and I believe most families already know that."
Writing for Parents: The Healthy, Resilient Kids Series
Several years ago, Mike began channeling his clinical experience into something he had long wanted to create: a book series written specifically for parents — not written down to them, not padded with disclaimers, but genuinely useful, warm, and honest.
That project became the Healthy, Resilient Kids manuscript series. (comming soon!)
The series is built around a simple but powerful idea: that informed, confident parents raise healthier children. Each volume takes a specific area of pediatric health and translates the clinical landscape into clear, story-rich guidance that parents can actually use — at home, in the waiting room, and in conversations with their child's provider.
Volumes in development and forthcoming publication include:
Building Resilience Series — A six-volume developmental arc from kindergarten through college, helping families support children's emotional, social, and physical resilience at every stage of growing up.
Foundational Resilience Series — Deep dives into the body systems and health challenges that define early childhood: vaccines, fever and common illness, allergies, GI illness, the first year of life, and the toddler years.
Nourishing Resilience — A parent's guide to feeding children for long-term health, energy, and wellbeing.
Athletic Resilience — Supporting young athletes through growth, injury prevention, and the mental side of sport.
Viral Resilience — A guide to the ten most common childhood viruses: what they are, what to watch for, and when to worry.
Building Rash Resilience — A parent-friendly guide to common skin conditions in childhood, from eczema to ringworm to the rashes that keep parents up at night.
Building Resilient Parents — Because raising healthy kids starts with taking care of the adults doing the raising.
Each book is written in Mike's voice — warm, direct, occasionally funny, and always rooted in clinical reality. His goal is not to replace the pediatrician. It is to make every parent who reads these pages feel like they have a knowledgeable friend in their corner.
The Person Behind the Practice
Mike was born and raised in Southern California, and the region's rich cultural diversity has always informed his care. He is a committed traveler with a deep curiosity about how different cultures and indigenous communities raise and care for their children — and he actively incorporates those perspectives into his practice philosophy.
He is married to a very supportive pediatric nurse practitioner. Together, they are raising four children — which, he will freely admit, has taught him as much about pediatrics as anything he studied in school.
His professional interests include expanding access to care, integrating complementary and alternative medicine into mainstream pediatric practice, and supporting children's developmental growth from infancy through young adulthood. His personal interests include the kind of travel that involves getting lost, eating unfamiliar food, and coming home with better ideas.
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