We talk with Navy-trained emergency physician and author Andrea Austin about what war zone medicine taught her and why so many clinicians feel broken after years of high-stakes care. We name what sits underneath “burnout” and lay out practical ways to protect the people who are the safety net on everyone’s worst day.

• Andrea’s path from 9-11 to military emergency medicine
• How the Health Professions Scholarship Program creates a long service commitment
• What changes when you practice resuscitation in a deployed war zone
• Why Andrea wrote Revitalized after a 2021 existential crash and sabbatical
• Moral injury vs burnout and how compassion fatigue shows up at work
• Complex PTSD in emergency medicine and why triggers can be unclear
• Why trauma often surfaces when stress finally drops
• The case for embedded therapists in the emergency department
• Debriefs, peer support, and how trauma can spread through team dynamics
• Boundaries, and how childhood patterns can reactivate in clinical work
• The “backpack” problem of unprocessed grief and the Body Keeps The Score
• Why The Pit matters for telling the story of emergency care and its cost

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