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.

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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.

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/

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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.

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.

What happens when the humanity of oncology collides with the creative engine of biotech? We sit down with Dr. Satya (Nanu) Das, a former gastrointestinal oncologist who left a thriving academic career to build the next generation of cancer therapies. He walks us through his turning points: carrying patients’ stories home, confronting the limits of “approved” treatments, and realizing that trial design (who gets included, what’s measured, and how fast signals are found) can change lives at scale.

We define biotech, from large biopharma to smaller startups, and how clinicians fit into two powerful tracks: clinical development, where protocols are designed and drugs move from first-in-human to pivotal studies; and medical affairs, where data becomes real-world practice through education and access. Dr. Das shares why oncology is inherently experimental, how phase boundaries are blurring, and why targeting biology instead of tumor labels opens doors for rare and understudied cancers. The conversation also gets personal: the emotional calculus of reconciling individual disappointment with collective success, and the courage it takes to “bet on yourself” when outcomes aren’t guaranteed.

If you’ve wondered whether a move from clinic to industry means leaving patients behind, you’ll hear a different story: one where debate beats hierarchy, evidence beats eminence, and collaboration is the default. We compare the instant gratification of patient care with the slower, high-stakes creativity of drug development, explore policy’s role in FDA consistency, and highlight how patient narratives can keep standards focused on what truly matters.

Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s biotech-curious, and leave a review! If you are a practicing clinician, a pre-health, pre-med, pre-pa or pre-nursing student, or someone who is interested in how our drugs are made, you'll want to give this a listen.

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 your hardest seasons became the fuel for your life’s most meaningful work? We sit down with Dr. Oluwole Babatunde, a physician who turned early loss, cross-continental training, and relentless study into a compassionate career in psychiatry. From medical school and public health in Nigeria to a PhD in epidemiology and psychiatry residency in the United States, his story shows how purpose and discipline can shape resilience that lasts.

We explore how global research exposure sharpened his analytics, how humility and grit powered a move that meant starting over, and why psychiatry emerged as the place where his lived experience meets his clinical skill. Dr. Babatunde opens up about cases where depression and anxiety intertwine with life stressors like job loss, divorce, and homelessness, and how listening for the trigger matters as much as the treatment plan. He shares what faith looks like in practice without preaching: values that guide every interaction, quiet habits that sustain hope, and the simple, sincere goal of sending patients out ready to be the best version of themselves.

You’ll also get a tour of his book, Adapt and Advance, and its MAPLAMP framework. We break down how to find meaning in hardship, convert big dreams into daily actions, plan with clarity, build networks that protect your growth, and anchor your work in a personal mission. If you’ve ever wondered how to hold steady through change, or how faith and evidence can coexist in mental health care, this conversation offers both a philosophy and a toolkit you can use today.

If this episode sparks something for you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review to help others find these stories. Your support helps us bring more human, practical conversations to your feed every week.

To hear more about Dr. Babatunde, please visit his website.

Purchase his book Adapt and Advance 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.

A 97% pulse ox can lull anyone into a false sense of safety, until ventilation fails and the patient quietly slips into danger. That tension between what looks stable and what is actually happening runs through our conversation with Dr. Julie Siemers, whose 46 years in nursing span ICU, trauma, helicopter medicine, academia, and leadership. We explore the moments that forged her commitment to advocacy (like the 90‑year‑old man without a family voice) and unpack why preventable harm is not just tragic, but systemic and solvable.

We walk through failure to rescue in plain language: failure to recognize, failure to act, and failure to communicate. Julie shares her “seven pillars” that anchor clinical judgment: vital signs, neuro assessment, labs and critical values, hydration and intake/output, diagnostics, communication, and escalation, showing how small signals add up hours before a crash. We dig into oxygenation versus ventilation, why respiratory rate is an early warning sign, and how opioids and sleep apnea can create a perfect storm, even when SpO2 looks good.

Culture matters as much as protocols. From air medical missions where airway and safety beat speed, to interprofessional exercises where authority gradients surface early, Julie argues that respect, clarity, and closed‑loop communication are life‑saving tools. We talk about simulation that builds confidence under pressure, Lifebeat Solutions focused courses that retrain judgment in one‑hour bites, and the readiness gap across professions that puts patients at risk.

Families are part of the safety team. You’ll learn how to ask sharper questions, use CUS words (Concerned, Uncomfortable, Safety issue), work the chain of command, and even choose safer hospitals with public safety grades. It’s a practical, human roadmap for anyone who wants to catch deterioration sooner, speak up with impact, and make care safer shift by shift, conversation by conversation.

To learn more, please visit: drjuliesiemers.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.

We start with a simple question: what is your why?

Today we sit down with Dr. Ken Botelho, a seasoned primary care PA and the founding director behind a new Doctor of Medical Science program, to explore how purpose, presence, and mentorship shape better clinicians and healthier teams. From the first lab review of the morning to the final patient call, he shows how showing up as a human can stabilize more than symptoms.

We dig into the realities of primary care right now: musculoskeletal injuries at the front door, diabetes and cardiometabolic risk on the rise, and anxiety and depression woven through many visits. With psychiatric access limited, primary care becomes the first line, demanding both clinical confidence and emotional skill. Ken shares how small choices (language, pacing, asking one more question) unlock trust and lead to better decisions. He also spotlights the hidden engines of the clinic: front desk teams, medical assistants, and call center staff who set the tone and carry the follow-through that make or break outcomes.

Then we step into education and leadership. Ken explains how the DMSc can elevate a PA’s career by formalizing mentorship, recognizing transition-to-practice learning, and turning precepting into structured academic credit. Teaching is a performance enhancer; it forces clarity, protects professionalism, and reveals the nuance we usually process silently. You’ll hear practical examples, like when to drop the white coat to build rapport, how to read the room, and why knowing a patient’s story changes the plan before the chief complaint is finished.

We close with a Quality Question worth keeping in your pocket: what is your why? Use it to unfreeze an interview answer, reset a tough visit, or guide a leadership decision. If this conversation gave you something useful, follow Shadow Me Next, subscribe for new episodes, and share it with a pre-health friend.

You can find out more about Dr. Botelho at his LinkedIn page

Or visit The College of St. Scholastica directly.

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.

Curiosity is a skill, and it can carry a medical career farther than raw talent. We sit down with interventional gastroenterologist Dr. Doug Adler to unpack 30 years of change in training, technology, and the mindset it takes to serve patients well. From the rise of gap years and research-heavy applications to the moment you realize you’re responsible for another human life, Doug brings candid advice and memorable stories that cut through the noise.

We dig into why GI is now one of the most in-demand specialties: broad organ systems, high-impact procedures, and advances that turned yesterday’s surgeries into today’s same-day endoscopy. Dr. Adler breaks down important techniques, evolving devices, and the practical realities of staying current so you never become the clinician practicing like it’s 1998.

For students and early clinicians, the conversation turns to professionalism and presence. Everything is part of the interview: your tone, pacing, clothing, and judgment under mild pressure. You’ll get a simple exercise to test whether your delivery inspires TRUST. And because a full life fuels better medicine, Doug opens up about flying single‑engine planes and writing about aerospace, space exploration, and the people who inspired him as a kid.

More about Dr. Adler at:

podcast: GIE

X (twitter): @DouglasAdlerMD

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.