Clinical Education Excellence with Patrick Battaglia, AVP Clinical Services

Dr. Battaglia joins me to discuss his compelling vision for a contemporary, cutting-edge approach to delivering clinical education and services, ensuring that whether the individual is a practicing chiropractor, naturopath, counselor and beyond that students and graduates see themselves as part of a larger integrated clinical delivery experience with conventional healthcare modalities. Dr. Battaglia is also a celebrated and accomplished chiropractor who has dedicated much of his career to linking the professions. 

To learn more about UWS, visit https://www.uws.edu. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

If a student came to me tomorrow and said, you know, I really want to work in a hospital, then we would have a different clinical path, you know, a learning path for them than if they said, I want to be very busy in a private practice.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the Whole Health Continuum, the University of Western States podcast. I'm Nathan Long, president of University of Western States. We're located here in Portland, Oregon, and online. University of Western States offers a world-class integrated healthcare education focusing on the whole person and provides an evidence-informed approach to health and wellness. For more information about our university, visit us at www.us.edu. As he often goes by, is also a resident uh of Canada and also of the United States. We're lucky to have him here at the helm doing so many of the things that he's doing with our students and the contributions he's made to chiropractic education in the United States. I had the pleasure of meeting him when I first started about a year ago. And literally the first two days of my time here, uh Pat and I sat down and I was so excited after leaving his office. We share a lot of the same philosophy around uh education in general, but also clinical practical education and preparing students from the moment they enter into the university up through and past graduation. Pat's done a lot of amazing things in just the short time that he's been with the university. And today we're going to highlight a lot of that uh here in this podcast. So, Dr. Bitagli or Pat, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Well, Dr. Long, thank you so much for having me and uh always appreciate a nice introduction like that. So thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

You got it. I I I'm paid to know I'm teasing it.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

You're welcome to keep doing it for the duration of this podcast. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

We'll we'll do it throughout, and and you know, uh if you're nice to me, even in meetings, so we'll do it that way. That's great. So so Dr. Bitagli, if you wouldn't mind just giving the uh uh the audience here a little bit about your background, how you got into the profession, how you pursued your education, what were some pivotal moments for you and why?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, absolutely. So uh as you mentioned, I am from Canada originally from Windsor, Ontario, small town just outside of Windsor, Ontario, and grew up um, like most do, playing a lot of sports, pretty involved in athletics, and uh actually played uh football in university at the University of Windsor, and um during that time had a lot of sports injuries and uh as a result of that got connected with a lot of different chiropractors in the area and happened to be studying uh human kinetics or kinesiology at that time and was just very interested in sports, athletics, uh movement-based interventions, and human performance and these sorts of things, and um started to have some uh really critical thinking about you know what I wanted to do with my life after after graduation. And, you know, like most, I was at that juncture of, you know, do I want to become a physiotherapist, which is what physical therapists are are called north of the border? Um do I want to go into chiropractic? Do I want to consider something else? And um started to really look a lot at chiropractic as a profession and settled on chiropractic mostly because I really enjoyed um or thought I would enjoy the autonomy that doctors of chiropractic uh have, you know, uh portal of entry providers, meaning people can just walk in off the street and see you. You have a lot of latitude with how to best care for them as part of their team, and that was really exciting to me. Um, so I settled on a career in chiropractic and ended up attending um chiropractic college in the States, um, did my what you might consider as like undergraduate chiropractic education there, and I say that because I ended up doing a residency afterwards. Um, so during my chiropractic education, um had a really strong mentor who was a chiropractic radiologist. His name's Dr. Norman Kettner, and I became really inspired to study more and learn more about radiology as a discipline. Um, so after I finished my chiropractic education, I actually ended up doing a residency, did a three-year full-time residency in chiropractic radiology, and then a one-year fellowship in advanced musculoskeletal imaging with a special emphasis on musculoskeletal ultrasound. So I'm the benefactor of a lot of education and a lot of high-quality mentorship. And really, it was during that time, that residency and fellowship, that I became very interested in uh graduate healthcare education and mentorship and the transformative potential that good quality education and good quality mentorship can have for really casting one's sort of career trajectory. So interestingly, um unlike a lot of my colleagues in chiropractic radiology, I actually went into clinical practice after that. I ended up practicing inside of integrated health systems as part of a university affiliation and ended up managing a number of those partnerships largely in the community health space. So I worked in large, uh, fairly qualified health centers or similar as part of a healthcare team, uh, working with patients predominantly with high impact chronic pain, but a number of other spinal and musculoskeletal disorders, and did that for um just under seven years and uh became even more and more interested and stimulated um by this concept of clinical education because I had a lot of students and even residents that rotated with me during that time. And I just saw time and again the power that access to um high-quality environments like these community health centers were. Um having access like that was just wonderful for these students to kind of stimulate their thinking about career potentials and um give them the opportunities that they were looking for in the clinical education space and really help them become preparatory for early career success. And that's sort of what brought me to the work I do today uh uh in our community-based clinical education program at University of Western States, which is um to try to do at scale what I have prior experiences doing, which is really work with every student to provide a really high-quality, immersive, and rigorous, contemporary clinical experience. So they're they're best prepared um for early career success. So I know that's a long background and sort of a build-up, but hopefully it provides some good context to some of the discussion later on.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

No, that was fabulous. I actually wrote down that that last point there that you raised. I think the high quality immersive and contemporary is really what you know the big differentiator that you're bringing to the role and to our students. So uh appreciate that. You may find that in the title of the episode, uh. You know, if we could back up a bit into some Cairo or chiropractic basics. Um and I'm asking the chiropractors who are uh on the program to do a little bit of reflection, maybe a little bit of Cairo 101 for the audience, because I, you know, we'll have some folks who are lay people who are you know not familiar. Um I think a lot of people have misconceptions, biases, uh beliefs about the profession itself, but I'd like to kind of roll back a little bit further before we get into that question. Can you talk exactly what is chiropractic medicine or chiropractic treatment? What exactly does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, that's that's such an interesting question. Um So I think that it's it's helpful to answer that question by first understanding what it's not. There's this sort of conflation of chiropractic as a healthcare discipline, um, or as a healthcare professional, the chiropractor, you know, what they do, which is very complicated and nuanced, and it's relational and all these things that that I'll circle back to. But there's this current conflation of that entity, chiropractic as a discipline or a practitioner, with one particular intervention, which is an adjustment or spinal manipulation. Certainly we're known for that, for that level of hands-on therapy. It's a part of what a uh current chiropractic visit includes oftentimes, um, but that's not the only thing at all. So I think it's really helpful to level set that what chiropractic is not, it's not just one intervention. So, what it is, it's it's a healthcare discipline, or these are practitioners that um in general have a lot more similarities than um being dissimilar. Most, if not all, chiropractors work with patients to help them feel and function better. That's sort of the core foundation. As a discipline, um, and you'll see this reflected in various state and provincial um regulations. We're inherently conservative. What does that mean? Uh don't prescribe medications, don't perform surgeries. Doesn't mean uh as a profession we're against these sort of interventions, if appropriate, necessary, but that's just not what we do. That's not our expertise. That's the benefits of team-based care and working alongside others to best care for the patient. So we're conservative healthcare providers who help people feel and function better, largely through a handful of common interventions. These would include manual therapy, hands-on treatments, um, spinal adjustments is oftentimes, or extremity adjustments, but also other sorts of hands-on interventions, soft tissue therapies, massage type therapies, but a little different, a little um slightly different than that. Um manual therapies, movement-based, so exercise or rehabilitative therapies, um, lifestyle intervention, stress management, healthy habits, these sorts of things, and other mind-body sort of interventions, uh, whether it's mindfulness-based stress reduction or what have you. So that's sort of the the wheelhouse of most uh most chiropractors. Um, and there's a lot more similarities, like I mentioned. If you were to look at most practices, if you were just to zoom in to any practice at any point in time, you're gonna see a lot more similarities than dissimilarities. You're gonna see a lot of chiropractors talking to patients, rendering diagnoses, giving reports of findings, and doing some of those interventions I mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

That would be So that's that's important to understand. No matter where you go, no matter what you see, whether it's you're in an academic medical center or you're in a private practice in a rural area, I would wager you're gonna see a lot more similarities than dissimilarities at the doctor-patient level.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Okay, all right. That's super helpful, and I think for our audience, a real good delineation as to what you do and do not do. When you talk about the we'll get into the myths here, but I have a follow-up question to what you just said. You you indicated in your uh in your introduction and alluded to it here in your answer that chiropractors can, you know, uh practice in a variety of different settings, right? So solo practices to integrated clinics all the way to hospitals. Uh, we have students, for example, in the in VA hospitals uh across the country. Situating yourself in that community clinic and the VA, what are things that the docs do at the institutional level that may be distinctive from the solo practitioner who's got a clinic that they're promoting within their particular community? Hope that makes sense. That question.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Um so you're right, at University of Western States, you know, our community-based program, we maintain approximately 20 VA affiliates across the country. Currently, we have students um ranging from the Portland area, uh Seattle area, Anchorage, Alaska, Fayetteville, North Carolina. So we are fortunate to have a good VA footprint. We also maintain a number of academic medical center relationships where students can rotate through non-VA hospital systems and learn um what success looks like as a practitioner in those spaces. So to your question, the the clinical piece, and this is my opinion, but there's some data to support this up to back this up. The clinical piece is largely more similar than what than dissimilar compared to private practice. The things you do with patients. It's the non-clinical piece is where you'll see a big divergence. Um your interprofessional skill set, your level of interprofessional communication, and how you can work alongside other providers, and your health system knowledge, your awareness of how to leverage the electronic medical record, how to uh order various tests, who does what and when it's needed. I'm referring to specialty referral in this case. Um it's really more at the health system and the care delivery level than it is actually the point of care where you're gonna see these big differences. And that includes understanding how patients are paying or are not paying for their health care. If you're inside of the VA, patients consume or pay for that care very differently than um if you're in a private clinic, as an example. So it's it's those, that knowledge, that understanding, that's where the key differences are. And that's where we have to be very intentional about um our level of student preparation. You know, if a student came to me tomorrow and and said, you know, I really want to work in a hospital, then we would have a different clinical path, you know, a learning path for them than if they said, I want to be very busy in a private practice. They would need different mentors in those spaces, not because of the hands-on clinical piece. Um, they'll get that in both, and they'll come in prepared from what we do on campus. That piece is fine, the clinical piece, the diagnostic piece, they'll get that. But it's all the other intangible things that you know you don't know until you're in the system and how to navigate, like most things, how to navigate the system appropriately.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's if that makes sense. It totally makes sense. So just one more thread I want to pull on this one is the idea or notion of working within an integrated care team. So um many moons ago I went to Mayo Clinic and I I got to witness firsthand an integrated care team taking care of an oncology patient, and they use it as a case for individuals visiting. So you can see how the pharmacist, the billing uh agent, the uh the social worker, the oncologist, the nurse practitioner, and on and on and on. I think they even had a massage therapist, for example, in that crew work together to support this patient through their treatments and all that cool stuff. Well, not cool to the patient, but cool in terms of the actual care that was being provided to them. And you could just tell that patient felt really held in that moment. Like these people care about me, you know, getting well, which is really profound to me and very moving. When you think about the chiropractor in an integrated care team, could you paint just a tiny snippet of a picture about what that might look like in a hospital or a clinic setting?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Sure. And um I I can speak largely from my own past experiences when I was uh when I was doing clinical work. Um, I was fortunate enough to be part of some of these teams that you reference. Um my level of integration was at the primary care level. I worked inside of community health centers, so I worked alongside primary care, so M D, D O, P A, N P, and other uh supportive um disciplines for primary care. Behavior health, um, worked very close on side behavior health, clinical pharmacy, um, nutrition, podiatry, optometry. That's sort of the primary care team. And we had physical function services, which was largely chiropractic care, that was integrated as part of that. Some of my colleagues integrate in the health system at different levels. For example, there's some colleagues that integrate in the Department of Neurosurgery or Physical Medicine. That's more specialty care. So some of their uh comments on this uh would likely be different. Um, but I'm, you know, very I I think very fondly of my time integrating alongside primary care, such a wonderful experience. And that looked uh like a few different things. It it looked like team-based care, like you mentioned, with the patient in the room. We would see the patient together sometimes, you know, the primary care doctor be talking to them, and then they would ask me, Hey Pat, what do you think about this or that? And can you take over at this point? And that's a really cool thing to have happen. And uh certainly patients really appreciated that level of uh attention and expertise being focused directly on them. Or it looked like different people, uh different providers seeing the patient at different times in the same visit. Um, that has pros and cons. Everyone's very thorough, it can extend the visit time, of course. Um, but more and more we used technology to integrate. And I think this is where you're gonna see a lot of improvements in in the chiropractic profession in general in the future is leveraging technology because most of us are integrated now in terms of the patient care experience, whether we even appreciate it or not. So if we use telehealth, if I were to use telehealth to do a patient appointment when they happen to be in the room with their PCP, that's one example. If the PCP and I are communicating asynchronously through the electronic record and um talking about the patient and effectively providing care that way or um guiding the care that way, that's another example. But those are just examples of how any chiropractor, whether or not you're integrated in the building, um, can support the patient's healthcare team. Um and I that's what I'm really excited for about the future of chiropractic as a profession is if we're enabled more by technology, we can be uh supporting more patients and different types of patients than we would otherwise see and be supporting these other primary care level providers.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's that's fabulous. Great answer. I'd call that an A plus. So we'll uh we'll give that to you for sure. So you have started to really evolve the clinic mindset here, the practice of what occurs day in and day out in terms of our work with students. I've been working closely with the chiropractic program. I think you're doing some interface, uh growing interface with the naturopathic program. In your own words, can you briefly describe the UWS clinic and what makes it unique within the domain of chiropractic and maybe naturopathic education in general? Where do you see some of the differentiators there?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Sure. And I don't um uh necessarily challenge the whole question, but I was I was really excited to come to UWS um because of the expertise that's here. You know, the the people like uh at the student-facing level, who's working with students. So, you know, faculty are known, uh, clinicians have expertise, um the deans are very committed to student success. So anyway, these things, you know, so it's certainly not a matter of me um changing a clinic mindset, but it's more so being part of a system of aligning clinic culture where we all want the same thing. We all know we want the same thing, which is an amazing experience for students and an amazing outcome for patients. And those are not like an A and B sort of thing. You can't rank one or the other. Um I think those of us in clinical education agree that they're very complementary. The better experience a student gets, the better the patient outcome is gonna be. The better the patient outcome is gonna be, the better experience the student gets. So I think there have been some changes to how we've thought about clinical education recently that's supporting that. But this is really, I think, an aligned, concerted effort from the dean level at the programs, you know, chiropractic, naturopathic medicine on down. Um what are some of those changes just to more fully lean into and embrace student success and community access to integrated and integrative health care? Um, we're a complementary clinic on campus. Um, so that means patients can come in and access our care effectively at no cost, um, which is great. We have a secondary mission outside of education, which as you know is community service and community impact. So this um allows us to fully embrace our mission, which is how do we best serve the community that we reside in and ensure that our students get access um to an appropriate level of uh diverse patient encounters and people that really need their services. So that's been some important changes that have improved, I think, the student and the patient experience. We do have co-located services. Those services include chiropractic care, naturopathic care. Those are physically located under the same roof. So co-located services naturally will cause collaboration, clinical innovation. We have a radiology department. Dr. Bev Harger is our director of diagnostic imaging. And she does a fantastic job of being at the bedside, so to speak. She's very integrated in patient care. She's always available for curbside consult, so talking to clinicians about what's going on, what tests should I order. Let me look at that MRI for you, real quick. Or reading the X-rays that we do in-house. And we've started to reintegrate or really integrate point of care and musculoskeletal ultrasound a little bit more on the clinical floor. This is something we're doing in the educational space now for learning purposes, but in the future we'll be doing it as a clinical service as well. When it comes to musculoskeletal health care, point of care musculoskeletal ultrasound is definitely going to be a requisite service that anyone's going to have to offer in the future if they want to provide high-quality and high-value musculoskeletal health care. So we've already started doing that on our clinical floor. So, you know, just to sort of summarize, uh, we have a no-cost model which allows a high level of access for our community and a rich learning environment on campus for our students. We have co-located chiropractic and naturopathic services, both complement each other really, really well. Uh, and we have other specialty expertise, namely radiology that we use and laboratory services that we use to support those primary care, uh primary care level services.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

It's truly a remarkable model. And to your point earlier, I I would agree with uh your your sentiments around the faculty and the staff there. They're just doing incredible work and have done so for decades. So you're you're in the company of of incredible practitioners and academicians. So, you know, we amen to that piece of it.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Um when you can can I add one more thing to that? Just to show the you know, we're continually trying to think of really a few things. I guess when I think about clinical education and the student experience, you know, the first thing I go to is like, what did I want as a student?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

You know, what did that what sort of experiences, what sort of diversity, what sort of uh rigor did I want as a student? And I think a lot of us think that way. So um we're motivated to provide. And it's not that I had bad experience at all. Um I had I had just a fine experience, and then I went into a residency and I had an amazing experience, and I saw the difference that that was. So um it's not that most of my colleagues didn't have good experiences, but we always think about boy, what would we have done different, what would we have liked better? Um, and so to that, the second thing we think of is how do we make it a longitudinal experience? How do we collaborate better? Um, so students learn preclinical and that feeds forward into early clinical, and the early clinical, which is on campus, is preparatory for the late clinical. And they're not disjointed pieces of the education, but it's a longitudinal experience. So we're continually working towards achieving achieving that um for our students, which I'm excited about. And there's a lot of um faculty engagement for that. For example, there's this initiative. Um I don't know if you're gonna have Dr. Lady on the podcast at some point, Dr. Susan Lady. I figured as much. Uh, it's gonna be a great interview. I look forward to hearing it. Um she's led an initiative, uh, her and Dr. Burnham called Link, which is learning in the classroom and clinic. So this is a way for preclinical faculty to uplift expertise in areas that you know they have and to feed it forward into the clinic with short reference documents that our clinical team can refer to. It's tough to be current on everything. So, and we're a learning community. We we have internal expertise that we can take advantage of. So the Link Initiative is one initiative that just shows the level of collaboration, pre-clinical into early clinical. And now we've started taking that, or we will be very shortly, into our off-site, our community-based program, giving this information to our community-based doctors on one hand, with we're giving them current information on important clinical topics, but then also there's a feedback loop. They're gonna tell us some clinical pearls, what they know of this condition. And we'll go through an appropriate vetting process, but we're gonna learn from them in this process as well. And you know, we're we're a network, we're a learning community, and and I think um you know that can really we can amplify and support each other. Um, and we have other non-clinical resources, so just to give some acknowledgement to our library, um Nicole in the library, she helped us design a health literacy library for patients, and we're gonna have that in the waiting area in the next month or so. And these are just textbooks, um, you know, reference manuals and so on, um, that are patient-facing so they can learn more about themselves. And and she has expertise in this space, so she was able to help us um get the resources that we need and really push it to the patients. And then our students are gonna see that and maybe adopt some of that when they go into practice and they have their own waiting area. And you know, all these things are we're pulling from different pieces and different people have different expertise, and it's gonna elevate the student experience, and it's gonna hopefully, and what I care most about, it's gonna elevate the level of their patient care interaction when they get into practice.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. So, in the in the remaining minutes we have left, there's there's one area I really want you to also highlight, and you just mentioned it, your community-based clinical education comment and the program that we have here. Um it is a yeah, I think for a lot of our listeners who hear about this, they'll say, oh, well, we already have this in other domains like psychology or counseling or even you know medicine-ish. I mean, in terms of internships and residencies, but it's different and it's unique in terms of how you've cultivated, I think, the relationships with the community-based doctors. So if you could give our audience a flavor for what that looks like, kind of at a macro level, and then kind of at a student level, what that student, like a student, might experience uh during their CBCE uh program. Uh for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

So just to standardize some of the language, because you'll hear different things or encounter different things, even in chiropractic. Um, when students do any off-site clinical placements, these are termed um perhaps internships. So these are oftentimes called community-based internships or CBI. Um, sometimes they're called preceptorships, sometimes they're called clerkships if they're in a bigger health system, respecting they're still a student. Um, sometimes they're called practicums. Anyway, a lot of different language for the same sort of thing, which is community-based learning. So at University of Western States, we collapsed that into our community-based clinical education program. And we firmly believe that uh whether a student is just starting this program, and our students can start as early if they're eligible, in our chiropractic program in quarter 10, um, or whether they're finishing this program and they're entering it in quarter 12, their last academic quarter. We firmly believe the experience should be the same in that it's it's high quality and it's immersive. So the traditional model, the older model of clinical education in the chiropractic profession, is to do a lot of onset on-campus clinical, and then the last little bit you go out and you just observe and you just sort of shadow, and then you get your license, and then you gotta start practice, and that's when the real sort of learning begins. Um we're trying hard to reframe that, and I think we've been uh successful so far, um, where we think that students should get a lot of preparation early on campus, and they spend at least two quarters with us uh in a real-world clinical environment on campus getting prepared. And if they're eligible and they meet their uh benchmark exams, they can go off-site into a clinic that's that's best for them. And what does best for them look like? Well, that looks like two things. One is the the region of interest. There's a lot of geographic flexibility with community-based learning. Um, many states and and most provinces allow for some level of student learning. And we it's a little nuanced. We work with students on what's appropriate and what the jurisdiction allows. Um, but there's a geographic component. You know, as you know, um we're very sensitive to the cost of education. We want to make sure students, if they can return home sooner and get an earlier start on getting ready for their career, that's something we want to support, as long as we can also support them getting a high quality education. Um, so where is is critical, and then what does the practice look like? There's a few big buckets or domain of chiropractic practice. We sort of talked about traditional private practice. There are practices that are more multi-site now that have a lot of different sites, and that practice uh landscape's a little different. And then there's integrated practices, like we mentioned, community health, uh hospital-based. Um, and again, to learn all of the social aspects of those different practice styles requires to be immersed in them. So uh we need to talk to students, and we do about what does a good fit look like? Because if you really want to be and you're set on being in a private practice and you do a long placement in a hospital, that just might not be a good fit for you, and vice versa. So where where you want to be and what you want to be doing, what does early career success look like to you? You have to marry those two things uh to ensure a good experience for students, buttressed by an adequate level of preparation.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

You know, it it I have to say you you and uh Dr. Kayser invited me to attend the Alberta uh tour of CBC docs and and to meet up with students and um their experiences that they recounted to us, including the doctors, it just was a resounding positive. This must be the way forward for chiropractic clinical education at that point in time. I mean, I think we heard that over and over and over again about how gratifying it was for the docs, how essential it is for the students and building their skill set, not just in the technique of chiropractic or the adjustments themselves, or uh but the business of it, the patient contact, um, the the various demographics they're working with. So a lot of kudos uh both to you and to our chiropractic faculty and team for imagining and reimagining what that can look like. Uh so I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

No, I appreciate that, and I I'm glad um you're able to see that that in action, right? That level of excitement from our doctors and and students. And you know, one of the other reasons that I was so excited to do this work at this institution is um knowing the alumni base. These are you know excellent doctors, and many of them probably think a lot like I do, is like, okay, what did I really want as a student? So aligning that and aligning it on a one-to-one scale, you know, if we have 80 students in a cohort, it's tough to bring in 80 doctors to an on-campus clinic that's finite in space and so on. Um so decentralizing it that way is you know, getting it one-to-one, you know, that that's an experience that I don't think we could replicate elsewhere. And it's authentic and genuine, and it's preparatory for practicing in that region. You learn the laws, you learn how the payer mix is, you start building community. I think what we all want for students, yes, we want them to be happy and satisfied in learning when they're in our program, but perhaps even more important, you have to be good stewards of that education, and we want them to have early career success. And those first three years are so critical. So I think you have to get early exposure early, or you have to get exposure early in where you want to practice to really capitalize on that.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

100%. So uh Dr. Bataglia, we're coming to the close, so I have three quick but I think essential questions. The first is in just a few words, when you think about University of Western States, what comes to mind?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

I think student for student focused, highly evidence-informed, um and high quality.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Beautiful. Lastly, what does whole person health mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Whole person health to me is a approach to healthcare that de-centers the healthcare system and centers the patient. It accompanies or encompasses all of the different facets of health and well-being, physical, mental, psycho, uh uh, social, spiritual, um, and so on. And it's a a way to view um health, wellness, prevention, and disease management.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

That is fabulous. I think we found our next Surgeon General of the United States, uh, Dr. Pataglio. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Oh boy, you're gonna have to cut that out of the internet.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Where can people find you online? And if you have any books or research you want to point people towards, uh let us know now.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

So uh I'm not as active on social media as some might like, but yeah, I I have uh I'm very responsive on email, actually. So if you uh want to chat more about community-based learning, please do not hesitate to email me. Uh I'm sure we can uh link an email, but it's P uh for Patrick and my last name Pataglia at UWS.edu. So please don't hesitate to reach out. I'd love to have a conversation if you're interested in supporting community-based learning. Um as far as research, I mean, certainly anyone's welcome to run my name on PubMed. I've had the privilege of having some good mentors in this space. I wouldn't consider myself a researcher in any fashion. I've bounced around in some different areas of interest reflecting what I'm doing at that time, ranging from radiology to community healthcare. And um maybe in the future, hopefully, some work on community-based learning, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Dr. Bitagli, a true game changer in the field. Thank you so much for being here today on our podcast. And to our audience, thank you for spending time with us. I encourage you to keep exploring the vast world of health and wellness and all that it offers us to lead richer, healthier, and happier lives. As a reminder, you can do more of that exploration here at UWS, universityofwestern states at UWS.edu. And you can also visit us on social media. You can find me, President David Long on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Instagram, as well as the University of Western States at all of those uh social media handles as well. I hope you continue to join me and our guests as we continue to explore the mind, body, and beyond. Take care, everyone, and be well.