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Reliably Well brings you thoughtful conversations from those who are shaping the future of healthcare, focusing not just on the technical side of the industry, but on the human element, the stories, the struggles and triumphs of individuals who are driving change. Join us for candid discussions that highlight both the challenges and rewards of working in a field where humanity and healthcare intersect.
A retired green beret with Army Special Forces and a former recon Marine with the Marine Corps Special Operations. Josh Strickland completed his undergraduate studies at the University of North Alabama before earning his master’s degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2014. Since then, he’s dedicated his career to emergency medicine and has been a valued member of the Relias Healthcare team for the last 10 years. Josh first met CMO Dr. Joe Johnsey.
in 2014 and the two have shared a commitment to patient-centered care ever since. A father of seven and a hilarious and natural storyteller, Josh brings both humor and heart to this episode, offering an engaging perspective on resilience, service, and what it truly means to care for others. And Josh Strickland’s one of my favorite people that I get to work with. And he also makes me laugh more.
than probably any person that I’ve ever met in my life and takes great care of patients. Josh, we’re really glad that you’re with us today. I’m glad to be here. Thank you very much. That was a nice introduction. I appreciate it. Yeah, Josh, this is a podcast I’ve been looking forward to because I have no idea where this is going to go. though I know the questions we’re going to ask, I have no idea where the answers are going to go.
And that’s thrilling and exciting. But I know that, you know, whenever Josh comes up with an answer, it’s both going to be educational and entertaining at the same time. I’m with Sumner, even when you’re getting a clinical call from Josh, you know that going to be right on point, but yet there’s going to be a surrounding story that is going to make you smile and enjoy the fact that you have been called by Josh in the end.
He is both somebody who can, if he needed to kill you with his bare hands, but he will disarm you with his charm and his personality at the same time, no matter how angry or upset the patient came into the interaction with, they’re going to come out of it saying, man, that’s a great guy. You know, nine times out of 10 asking, where’s your clinic? Where can I, where can I see you as, as a patient? So really unusual that somebody who has all of this military
background and really intense military background has the personality that you have. So all of that build up that we have, Josh, tell us your story. What has you, ⁓ we’ve heard this resume that Dr. Abraham’s told us about you, but what’s your story, Josh? Well, you know, I was thinking in the past few days about doing this and what you’re going to say and
You know, it’s we could. I could sit here and talk and and and go on for days. But I think like just sitting here with you guys speaking, I thought about this and I think one of the problems that we have as health care workers as adults as people in our modern society is we’re not honest. We walk around with this armor of protection and then we want to have inherent relationships with people. But but we’re not honest with ourselves. We’re not.
personable or afraid for anybody to see a chink in the armor. And I think one of the things, and I’ll get to the story, but in my background that I try to do is, look, I’m a human. I am somebody that’s flawed. I’ve made tons of mistakes, you know, and those things have made me who I am. And I’m happy about it. Like God, you know, in the Bible, it says, you know, all things come together for the good, you know, those who love the Lord, you know.
And I feel that way. And I think that’s true in my life. I’ve got a story and not all of it’s good. A lot of it’s really bad. And for a long time, I kept my head down and didn’t know how to, you know, be who I was. didn’t know who I was. And so I’m not afraid, you know, to talk about those things. And if I go back to my life, like from the start, I grew up in Florence, Alabama. What am I saying with all that is I’m going to be honest and I’m going to
be honest with people bec afraid to be honest. But I my story is like forest n I grew up as redneck as I came along. I was born an electrician. My mother w
had flaws, but they were, you good loving folks. Nobody beat on me. Nobody was, was, you know, intentionally mean to me. My brother was 10 years older than me and my sister was five years old. So, you know, we come out of the urban cowboy era and my dad, he’s a horse trader and, ⁓ know, by, you know, when he’s not at work. And so one of the things that I remember growing up, I grew up playing baseball, sports, you know, and
Alabama, you know, like most kids that grew up in Alabama at that time, I wanted to be Bo Jackson and, you know, had those kind of aspirations. Well, from the earliest that I can remember in my life there, and I can tell you the three things that probably brought me to where I am today or three areas where my life, where I had situations where, where, where that changed the course or the pattern of my life. So, but I remember it’s a common thing to me.
throughout my childhood. You I grew up around rough people, but the culture was, you’re going to get off work, it’s beer 30, we’re going to drink alcohol, you know, we’re going to, you know, party and talk about the glory days. You know, people kind of, at least the people I grew up around, it was very narrow tunnel vision, you know. And so that’s what I grew up. Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. were already always in the background, you know, and we’re always hearing stories about
You know, I remember that time, you know, my daddy and his buddies drinking. You know, I remember times Jimmy drunk him 12 beers. He slapped that old boy at that, you know, and they’re laughing and they romanticize that. And from the earliest age, that was, that was something I thought, that’s cool. I want to, so, you know, whenever I was growing up, you know, at about 14 or 15, and I got really impressionable, that’s what I wanted to do. You know, like I can’t wait till I can, you know, go out and party and
and and and and you know, get out of school, be an electrician, drink every weekend and talk nothing wrong with being an electrician. But, you know, and work construction and and and and really raise heck in the community. You know, that’s that’s probably a sad, you know, I guess, you know, I my kids to want to be doctors and lawyers and help people and do good things. You know, go work for the March and Dimes, be missionaries. I wanted to be Hank Williams Jr. I wanted to be, you know, an outlaw.
So when I was 15 years old, started drinking alcohol and ⁓ I loved it. And so, and this all has a good ending, I believe. But when I was 15 years old, had, I was kind of got with the wrong crowd and I had been with the right crowd up to then. And I started hanging out with some guys that were drinking during the week and drinking on the weekends. I don’t know what plane of existence I’m on, that it was a Tuesday or Thursday night and we’re like 16 years old.
You know, hey mom, see you at one and come back smelling like alcohol. Nobody thought anything, but my dad, you know, drank. It was an alcoholic and a good man. But my parents were having some problems and I kind of got, you know, my brother was 10 years older. He was out of school. My sister was older than me. You know, she was graduating and I was kind of forgotten and my parents had a lot of stuff going on. But one day in 1994, me and my friend, Keith Ham,
got in a, we had a, they had a basketball team made it to the state playoffs or the regional part of the state playoffs. So we had a game in Hanceville, Alabama. So I had barely turned 16 and we get in the truck to go to the game, me, all my buddies, you know, all my county friends. All right. So we go to the game. So, you know, we’re probably drinking some beer and doing the kind of things that we did. We get to the game and I kind of disappear from him and we start.
I’m just watching the game hanging out with my buddies. So I come back to after the game, we met up with the vehicle where the guy that I came with, like apparently during the game, he just stayed out in the truck and drank beer. And I didn’t know this, you know, I mean, I drank and other things. wasn’t, you know, wanting to ride around drinking alcohol and doing that kind of thing. I’ve never thought that was good. But we get to the game or we get after the game’s over, I get back to the truck.
And he’s like in the parking lot with some other, you know, guys that that, you know, wanted to, you know, party and then that kind of thing. I guess I thought they were just watching the ball. So he goes to Lee and ⁓ and everybody’s like, you shouldn’t be driving. You shouldn’t be driving. I don’t know about all these things. You know, I just see a buddy there. You know, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. So like a 16 year old, I go and I’m like, I jump in the in the vehicle with.
I’m like, I don’t want him to die. don’t know what to do. It’s you’re thinking about things in a few seconds. I get in the truck. So we take off down the down the interstate there or the highway. And then all of a sudden, this guy just starts driving like out of control, like as fast as you can possibly drive a vehicle. And now I’m scared. I’m like, this is not good. This is not what I signed up for. So I’m begging him to stop the vehicle. So we end up
Ramping over the median going about 85 mph. I did not have a seatbelt on. We hit an oncoming vehicle that was going 70 mph. ⁓ And next thing I knew I woke up in the hospital and it was a day later and the doctor came in there and said, son, you should be dead. ⁓ They said the entire console of that vehicle that Chevrolet Silverado was in. He said I saw the pictures you come your head hit it and it completely detached.
It was split completely down the middle of lying at the floorboard. And he said, and then he walked out. My dad said, and I know at this point, I’m not even, I don’t even know what world I’m in. You know, I had a really bad head injury. And he said, that guy y’all hit that. And I was completely crushed. And I think that that’s where I really started.
Like I felt so guilty and so bad. ⁓ and, and defending fifth, 16 year old me, I would have never gotten a behind the wheel vehicle driven that way. I was there. I was, you know, part of this, but, ⁓ I wouldn’t have done that, but I didn’t want him to be alone. didn’t want something bad to happen. I didn’t know what was, you know, I’m, I’m a kid. ⁓ and so this, this guy died. So.
It had a profound effect on me and I’ve had, you know, guilt from that the whole time. But what happened was, you you think, OK, well, that’s bad. You go to school the next week and all of a sudden people that I had grown up with, know, you’re, you know, what’s what’s going on, guys? We’re going to hang out Friday and this Josh, we can’t hang out with you, you know, parents and people who you’ve known your whole entire life and now and understand it, you know.
Nobody wanted to see Josh coming anymore. They were disappointed in me. I did not bring hope to them anymore. I was someone who it’s better if he’s not around. What’s better if he’s not around? Anything’s better if he’s not around. And I felt alone and not defending that behavior. But since that time, I remember I’m a people pleaser. I am a people pleaser. I want people to be happy and pleased with me. And I think that a lot of that
That part, and I’m not saying this, and I’ve only talked to my kids about things like this for the most part because I don’t want to romanticize things the way they were romanticized to me. But that loneliness and that kind of feeling of like there’s no hope. I think that’s when it started where I want people to see me come in a room and have hope. I want people to see me come in room and think he’s going to make things better. And I think that that is where that started.
From there, I go on to school, I graduate, you know, like somebody who’s dealt with some things like that when they were a little bit younger, I didn’t really have a plan. So from 18 to 21, I just kind of worked labor kind of stuff. thought my brother had a construction company and I worked with him and was just really the kind of spin of my wheels. But in 2000 or 1999, I was 21 or that’s turned 21 years old. And, you know, I
drinks every times a week, worked, was fat, didn’t have a lot of aspirations. ⁓ And one day I just remember I’m sick of this. And I just went and I got a piece of paper and I wrote time out on it. And I laid it down in my mother’s apartment. They were divorced at that point. And I went down to Marine Corps Recruitment Office and I said, I need to something different. And I didn’t know what I needed to do, but I thought this is something. And so I joined the Marines. When I got into the Marine Corps,
That was the second thing that really was the hinge point in my life that changed the course. I go in, I’m going to be in the infantry. My brother had been in the infantry and the Marines. And so whenever I joined, I was probably didn’t have a lot of confidence, other things. So I get through infantry school and they have reconnaissance, which is what they call Marine Corps Special Operations now, MARSOC.
But that was, for years it was reconnaissance and force recon as they call it. But that was their special operations. So when I got out or whenever I got out of infantry or boot camp and went to infantry training, I’m ready to go to the infantry. And so they come and call us a bunch of us to a formation. There’s like a thousand guys and they’re like, okay, know, these certain number of guys are going to take the recon indoctrination test.
Which is like for, you special operations. Well, I’m looking at the guy left and the right of me and I’m thinking he may have signed up for this. I did right. I just want to go to the grunts and do the infantry and get out. I don’t want to go to some compound in Indonesia or whatever and train and eat rabbits, you know, or so they pull me out and they’re like, no, Mr Strickland. They’re like, you’re going to take, know, you’re going to take the indoctrination. I’m like, why? And they said, and this first time I ever heard this, said,
your GT score, which is how they get it to test, you know, where they, guess, figure out your intellect for aptitude. You know, if this pulley is going this way and this is going that way and there’s a train here, what time is it in Omaha? You know, like those kinds of questions. And so they said, you made too high on this test. They said, so we have selected you to do this and, and, and, and, and the physical stuff too, like, so.
You know, my PT test scores were high and all these things, so you have to take this indoctrination. It’s physical. You swim with the brick. You go underwater. They drown you. You run three miles on this stuff, so out of 1000 people, me and 12 other guys get selected and it was the I’ve never had anybody tell me you’re smart. We want you. You’re we need you. We want you around and this was totally what what 15 year old Josh.
Had had never heard never. I don’t sound like I was a whiny kid. My mom didn’t love me enough, but but it was because I had great parents, but I wanted to hear that and it was such a big deal because I didn’t know if I was salvageable, you know, and these guys said not only are you salvageable, we need you. You’re smart. You’re fast. You’re strong. You’re elite. And so I ended up, you know, getting selected for that and they put us on a bus and shipped us to Virginia Beach.
⁓ and I was around the best young man in the entire United States of America and probably the world. And these guys were awesome. And I ended up getting in reconnaissance and, and, being in special operations for four and a half years. And it was the first time where I saw when people would say, ⁓ you can do this, but you just need to do this this night. You can do it, whatever it is that you need to do, but people that was always positive reinforcement and those things. So my world from there.
just completely went from this tunnel vision of, you know, live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse, which I’d have trouble that you kind of got to be good looking to die good looking. But, you know, it opened up. It my life completely opened up. So that was I think from there, I mean, I started to excel and I I really have not looked back from that. So I get out.
I go to college at the University of North Alabama. I get my history degree and my father-in-law is my history professor, so I ended up meeting his daughter through that. But I get out. I have a history degree and I go online and I’m going to put in applications. And then I’m like, let’s see what I qualify to do. ⁓ Matco, ⁓ drive through multiple places. You know, maybe I could do like a greeter for Disney tours, like
Like I have a bachelor’s in history. What am I going to do? Are you going to teach history? Are you going to go and like go to med school? I did really good in sociology class, you know, or civil war history. you know, so I get out of that. My buddy, I run into him. I’m like, I just graduated college. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I didn’t really plan for that, but I had to, made it, I had like a 3.9 GPA. I was so proud of myself. My mother and my dad were proud of me. And so I get out.
And he said, ⁓ he’s talked, talked with him about special forces. And so he’s like, you know, ⁓ we’re looking for guys at my unit. And I was like, you think that who would get out of being enlisted in the Marines and go to college and get a degree and go right back into the military? ⁓ me. And so I go to special forces selection army. I passed that. I get my green beret.
two and a half years and I’m medic. So you have to be an MOS on the Special Forces team. So every Green Beret is either a radio operator or they’re an engineer or they’re a weapons guy or they’re a medic in 18 Delta. And the 18 Delta course is really long, but it’s awesome. It was about a year long. And so I did that. So my entire training with Special Forces was two and a half years. So I got out, deployed, spent the next
⁓ you know, 10 or so years there. And then at my last deployment, I applied for army PA school. Just had been around, you know, the PA thing, it really kind of comes from the military from, you know, the forties, fifties and that kind of thing. So I just been around a lot of guys who, who, ⁓ who, know, you have a PA in every unit and they were very, ⁓ I was pretty good at the medical stuff and they were just, just good people and you want to emulate them and I want, I want to be like that guy. And so I, ⁓ went to army PA school.
in 2012 and then I got out in 2014. So right before I come to work here, so at the very end of PA school, I’m waiting to graduate and come home because I’ve been gone for a long time. So in January of that year, or I guess seven or eight months sooner, my father-in-law came to live with me and my wife in Clarksville, Tennessee, because he had glioblastoma.
He had a car wreck and they did a CT. He wasn’t even hurt. He wasn’t having headaches and he had glioblastoma. So he lived with us five or six months and you know, that was the end. So that was stressful. I’m in PA school or I’m in Clarksport, Tennessee doing my rotations. We’re getting done and this is kind of the other thing that I think the 2014 was a year that really also I think affects the way that I try to be with patients or the way that I practice health care or who I am as a person.
He died in January. So we came back, went to the funeral, went back to where I was in Clarksville. ⁓ And then in March of that year, ⁓ I was outside playing in the snow with my kids in early March and my sister called and she said that ⁓ my grandparents went to check on my dad and he had been, he was in his bedroom and he had
He had hung himself on a cabinet there and I knew he had been sober for many years and he gotten some and these are, you know, kind of harkens to a lot of medical stuff. He started hurting. He got on pain meds. Nobody really asked him, you know, and there’s a patient responsibility. But if he, you know, drank alcohol or if he had problems with addiction and once he got pain management, you know, it ended up buying meds on the street and then all of sudden he was drinking alcohol.
And then that that killed it because he was so proud that he’d been sober for all those years because he did get cleaned up once I got through the Marine Corps and stuff. So we go down for his funeral. So I get out of school. I have a Red Cross letter, emergency letter when I show up. You got to leave my sister or or or I’m getting ahead of myself. So my sister called. All right. She tells me this. go home. All right. So we had my dad’s funeral the next week. My sister is down.
to see me and check on and help me out with things. So she’s only down there because my dad’s ⁓ funeral, because she lives in Nashville, Tennessee at the time. So she’s staying with a friend of ours, a good friend. And during the day, she’s taking a shower and his brother and his girlfriend, so the guy she’s staying with is her good friend, he’s at work. So during this time, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend come down and they’re fighting.
drunk during the middle of the day and it was just, you know, they, their relationship was a perpetual, you know, domestic violence thing. And so they, she, my sister goes to get out of the shower and they show up over here and she can tell something strange. So they knock on the door, my sister puts her clothes on, they come and sit on the couch and my sister says, I’m going to,
Florence could or I, you know, which there she’s like 20 miles away. I’m going to Florence and we’re going to, we’re going to go through my dad’s stuff and that. So I got to get out of here. So as soon as my sister gets to the door, the gentleman, it was not a gentleman at all, the guy and his, his murder and the, girlfriend are sitting on the couch. The girl, my sister almost gets out that door and the girlfriend grabs her arm and says, me with you.
At that point he gets up, slams the door shut, picks up a 22 rifle, shoots the girl in the face twice and shoots my sister in the head twice. So I’m at PA school. give me, just, or I’m back, and I’m back to come back home, but it’s a week later. So I’m just, I’m checked back into class. come get me and then they, they said, you know, come out and tell me this. So then I go back home. And, know, at this point you’re just, my God, you know, what’s happened?
So I ended up graduating, getting out of school. And then I start ⁓ in Alabama working. The first day I worked, they called me and my brother, this is the same year, went to get, he’s living at the Salvation Army. He’s had some substance abuse issues. This is the thing. And he went and refilled his meds the day before and they found him dead the next day. So all this said, I start practicing about the end of this year. And I’ve had one of the worst years of my life, but
I say all this to say that I felt alone. All of a sudden I had nobody. I’m waiting to come back and tell everybody what I have and all these things, big people proud of me, and they’re just gone. ⁓ And so I know, and I think, so that brings me, you know, kind of forward to where I am now. So I have this thing about people being alone and being afraid, and I hate it. I hate it.
don’t want people to be alone and I don’t want people to be afraid and that is what I want to do and I don’t want people to think they can’t do anything and I don’t want people think that it’s over, it’s the end and these things. So that kind of brings me together. My family, we moved back shortly after that. I’ve been in Florence since that time. You know, worked here, met Dr. Johnsey, was great, gave me a wonderful opportunity in Tupelo and then on to Pontotoc and elsewhere.
I say all these things not to say, well, look at Josh, look at all the things that, that’s nothing. I mean, that’s life stuff that happens to people. There’s a lot of worse stories, but I say that to say that I’m not ashamed of it. I’m a human being and I want people, and I think those things make me relate to people in ways that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And I wish those people were a bit back, but I wouldn’t trade anything that’s happened to me.
to get me to this point at all. I certainly wouldn’t cry about it ⁓ or whine about it. And one of the things that opened up to me that I think that I can relate with patients a lot now is it’s like you look back and I’m a Christian, know, everybody’s not, that’s okay. But you can look back in the Bible and you think, you know, we think about the way people die and my God, that’s horrible. And with all the stuff that happened to me, I mean, people look at, you know, wouldn’t look at me like.
Like there’s the strickling curse. my God, you hear what happened to that guy? But no, it’s not. It’s not like that. John the Baptist and Jesus, the two most important figures, it tells you in the Bible of all time. And God tells you, said John the Baptist’s greatest man ever born of a woman. And then, of course, Jesus, look how they died. They died horrible. They died horrible, horrible death. So I know it’s not the way people die. It’s the way that you live. And I want to live.
in a way that gives other people hope. It makes them happy for me to be in the room. It makes them, they’re comfortable when I’m there. I’ve been around a whole lot of death. And you know what? You don’t have to die afraid. You don’t. You can die with warmth and compassion and those things. And so that’s what I try to convey in 30 Seconds or Less when I go on a patient trip. Josh, thank you so much for that story.
That’s what we’ve been trying to do with this season of this podcast is to talk to clinicians and people that are involved in healthcare about that human side. A lot of times we have to go into those patient interactions and we have to be professional with them. And we certainly can’t, we can’t bring everything that makes us
the person that we are into that room at that time. But it is all of that story that makes us the person that we are, that makes us the clinician that we are. And, and, you know, I knew a lot of your story. I didn’t know all of your story and I certainly didn’t know the way that your, story unfolded that, that I think makes the story even more.
incredible that you have gotten to the point that you are. And I just want to say, and I’ll say it again, as we go through this, thank you, because it is powerful and it’s impactful to all of us, I think, to hear that and the genuineness and the honesty that you share it with. But that’s so much what we’re exploring. Yes, Is that
⁓ that aspect of who we all are and what life has shaped us and molded us and created in us to bring to the bedside and help us to remember. As Sumner says, we all have belly buttons. We all are individual flawed people, whether we’re the clinician or we’re the patient. And we got to remember that when we go and have that interaction with people that we’re all human.
We are just simply trying to do the best that we can for that flawed individual that’s before us to help them through this, this difficult time that they’re in, just like we’ve had those difficult times ourselves. So it’s wonderful. I just had to say that after hearing such a powerful story like yours, Josh. Well, thank you so much. And I appreciate it. thank you. I want to get to a point where
And I want people around me to know that it’s okay. It’s all okay. It’s all okay. Just let’s be human beings, you know, and we forget that so much that we’re, you know, we, because some of us look different or we think that, you know, how we look, how we dress, our background, all this stuff makes us different. And it’s not. It’s life, love, loss, compassion, know, death, bills, all this common human experience.
That’s what brings us together. It’s not whether you got a degree or and he doesn’t or you’ve got 10 or you got a Ferrari and those things don’t matter. They do not matter. It’s the common human experience and that’s where I think that we need to realize to come that that’s what brings us together with people. You know, we’re not a bunch of aliens in a room who have no commonality.
I wouldn’t tell those things for a long time. And then I realized that’s that’s that’s that’s silly. This is who you are. You know, I thought, you if you tell this story, you know, they thought, well, my gosh, that guy was what look what he was doing when he was a teenager. know, you’re going to put faith or trust in him and and and the like might be a stigma. But no, I know what I don’t want in life. I know what things feel like and I know I know where I don’t want to be. Those experiences are exactly.
why I’m not in there and I’m not in that that’s not who I am. And when you’ve had those things, it can help you to understand where somebody else is. And honestly, how do you get out of the ditch if you’ve never been in the ditch? Exactly. It’s shifting gears a little bit here for you. Relias, we’ve got five passions.
here that we identify here, people, innovation, value, excellence, and quality. And so we ask our guests, which one of those passions identifies most with you, Which one resonates most with you in your life, in your professional experience, in your personal experience? Which one of those is most Josh-like? Well, I’m glad that one of them is not charty, because I would not have picked that. It wouldn’t have mattered. ⁓
It’s definitely people. It’s definitely people. And I always think back to, know, if you want to, how do you get all this right? You know, there’s a lot of things we try to adhere to. you know, you go back to the Pharisees who I always, you know, try to remember the Pharisees, they’re kind of like people who work in billing, right? They’re always trying to trick you up. But in the Bible, they ask Jesus, you know, they’re trying to trick him and they say, what’s the greatest command?
You know, he’s gonna, there’s no way he’s gonna get there. See, we’re gonna, we’re gonna have some heresy here and we’re gonna, we’re gonna throw this guy into the bus. And of course, Jesus being the coolest guy ever, you know, says, love your God with all your heart, your mind, all you, you know, everything you are and love your neighbor as you love yourself. If you love your neighbor as you love yourself, you’re not gonna, you know, throw grass clippings in their yard. You’re not gonna, you know, you’re not, you’re not gonna.
go kill them. You’re not gonna, you know, all these things you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you know, protect them and want the best for them. So with patients, I think if you put the patient first, if you really care about the patient, you’re gonna get all those other things are gonna fall in line. You’re gonna be excellent. You’re gonna give them quality. And, and, and I think that goes across the board, you know, you know, I don’t want anybody to come in the hospital that has something that I can prevent.
and go home and die because they’re a human being and I don’t want them to die. And if I was in that situation, I don’t want that to happen to me. Similarly, I may see a patient who doesn’t have a lot of money and is struggling and has a lot of other things going on in their life. You never know what people are going through. And they’re coming in to be seen for something that’s been going on for a while, something that can probably be handled, you know, as an outpatient. And I don’t want to order.
$78,000 worth of tests they don’t need because they’re going to get billed for that. And who knows when that’s going to be the straw that broke the back, you know? So I try to be cognizant of that. And I think if I want them to be treated the way that I would want to be treated, exactly the things that I would want someone to say to me, I want to say to them. And so I think if you handle the people aspect, I think those are the things I think you fulfill all the commands.
And so that’s what I think is probably the one that means the most to me. I certainly guessed people would be your passion that you would identify with. No doubt there. Yeah, no doubt there. So if we ask you about the greatest influence in your life, you already mentioned several impactful inflection points that you had, but
Is there, is there something that you would pull out as that thing that was really most influential or that person that was most influential to you? Yes. And there’s been, there’s been a lot of them. If I’m on a podcast, can I say the boss or everybody listen to me? I can’t believe you said the boss. I’m going to get to that. But, ⁓ number one would be probably my dad. My dad was, ⁓ he was a papal person. He was always really nice.
to people. always had time for people. He talked to people, you know, and I remember being a kid and we would go to places. We’d go to, you know, just a gas station and he would just talk and talk. And I’m like, my gosh, you know, and he would say things and I would, you know, think, be embarrassed or find it cringy or whatever. And you look back and you’re like, my dad treated people so well. He was warm. He was friendly.
He was open. never walked into a building and passed someone he knew and looked the other way, you know. But he had that kind of personal skills. He could get to know people in a short amount of time. And he cared about people and he cared about their story and he cared about those people. And it never mattered, you know, what they look like or that kind of thing. I remember when my dad died, I mean, I had people that…
that I would not have expected from different walks of life that showed up at Simon 20 years and were like, loved your daddy. He meant something to me. And those people, a lot of them didn’t look like me. They were just from different cultures and walks of life. And you saw him walk around with his boot and his belt buckle and driving his truck and George Jones blaring all the time. You’d think, you wouldn’t think he had such an impact on such a diverse amount of people that he did.
But I remember he told me a story. He was, and he was going through a tough time. He was driving home from work down the O’Neill Bridge, which crosses from Muscle Shoals and to Florence one night. And this is a thing that really stood out to me because we all say, you know, if we’re in a situation where somebody needs us, it’s life where my side, we would do whatever it takes. A lot of the times we don’t, a lot of the times we say that, you know, we don’t.
You know, it’s well, got this going on, but I need to get home real quick. Something else is more important. Everybody’s victim of that, but he was going through a very tough time. I know this and he had in the late nineties, just been divorced. My mother is drinking. He quit in like 2002, but but he’s drinking and got bad, but he was coming home from work one night and there was a guy standing on the side of the bridge like two, three in the morning and.
My dad saw him over there and he told me they didn’t even tell me this story to like like a year before he died. But this was you’ve been a boy to been 20 years before or something like that. And he said there were he said, I saw a guy standing on the side of the bridge on the top. And they said, I just happened to look up and say and they said, I stopped. They said my car, my truck. And they said, I walked back up there to the bridge. And they said, I looked up there and I saw him. I said. Is it that bad?
And he said they started having a conversation and he just stood there and talked to him. Didn’t flag much people down, didn’t call the police. He just stood there talking. And then finally, uh, he had, he had got to know the guy and got to, and I don’t, I don’t remember his name or whatever. And I would want to say it anyway, but you know, he just had a conversation, just talked to him. Didn’t, Hey, sir, you need to do this. Hey, you can stop everybody, make a big sign. He just said, is it that bad? And I thought.
Sometimes that’s what people need to hear. And so he stayed out there 30, 40 minutes and just talked to this guy. And I don’t know, my dad was going through a rough situation, but he stopped. This guy wasn’t even facing the script. The guy’s, you know, just sitting out there standing on the bridge, looking out at the water. You know, he could have went home, you know, because I will, somebody’s going to kill herself. They’re going to kill herself. I don’t know this guy. I got to be at work tomorrow. My world is just, I’ve just been divorced and.
and had a lot of stuff going on. He stopped and showed compassion and warmth. And by the time the police showed up, the guy was ready to come down. And he came down and my dad left. There was never a write up in the paper. He never told us about it. He never called me and told me about it. He just did it because it was the right thing to do. And he did it because somebody else, saw another human being who was hurting. And he had hurt and he did not want.
that person hurt the way that he had. And that to me was, I get teary-eyed now thinking about it. And I love that, you know? And so that to me was like, if he can do that, he wasn’t making $500 an hour. He didn’t get a Daisy Award or a parking spot for that. He didn’t get anything for it except the…
the fulfillment, the one thing you can’t pay for knowing that you helped another human being and change the trajectory of their life and save the life. And so that was huge to me. That was huge. And also Dr. Johnsey, the guys that realize and you, and I don’t mean this because I’m on your podcast and other things. And I don’t mean this because you’re my boss. I’m being totally serious. When I worked.
In Alabama, I didn’t have the greatest experiences with with, you know, and I’m not trying to talk bad about anybody, but but I didn’t have the greatest experiences with the people I work with. OK, you hired me, you took a chance on me and and that meant something to me. But in that from the day I talked to you on the phone till now, you all these doctors at the core group when I started working there and I can go through the list and I don’t want to.
believe me, I wouldn’t want to leave anybody out, you know, but have always been supportive of me and believed in me and thought that I could do good things. I remember you called me, you said, let’s go to Pontiff Todd. They want to see if the PA can run the AR and I think you can. That to me, my whole life, that’s what I wanted people to say, Josh, I think you can. And when somebody says that and then you may say, I know you can’t.
But that was the message. I always wanted little 16 year old Josh going back to school after car wreck. I wanted people to say, we think you can, we know you can, we believe it. And that was huge to me. And I’ve had that personality and that attitude from everybody. I can call people at three in the morning. There’s 10, 15 doctors I know from our group that I can call.
at three in the morning and they would answer the phone and they would treat me like a human being with dignity and respect and humility. I could call you at that time and that’s what I would get and I get to go and I tell my kids all the time and I tell people say you work out of town. You work all this time out of town. I work with people who are there for me. I work with people who back me up. I work with people who build a foundation.
on the rock, the hard ground and not on sand. And that’s what I want to be a part of and people who care. You know, I would say that I have, had, as soon as I started working in T-Pol, I saw people who actually had compassion and talked to people and cared about people. And it was a little more than making the dollar. I didn’t see that.
when I worked in Alabama, didn’t, you know, for the specific place that I worked. I’m not saying all places in Alabama, I there’s places in Mississippi you could probably go and or anywhere. We know that where you could get the wrong people, you can get the wrong guy on the wrong shift. But I hadn’t experienced that. And that was something that was huge for me. And that is something that I don’t think that I get to go to my job and I get to work for people who believe in me. I get to work for people who care about me.
I have a job and I have job security because I work with people who don’t make knee-jerk reactions who create employees like people and not like numbers. And there’s nothing I could trade for that. You could just say, oh, hey, so and so, we’ll give you $100 more an hour to come work over here. But will you give me these other things? Because those are the things that are important. I make great money. But I’m saying that’s not what it’s about.
You what I mean? It’s about people and working with people who care about you and working with people who have your back and working with people who value you as a human being. And I think that that to me has been a huge influence. it’s your character and your work ethic and those things. It’s top down, round up. And so you and all the reliance doctors
who you know I don’t know all of them but the ones that I work with that core group that got started you know over there have been just amazing to me and I want to you know it’s my wife hates to part in the same private rhyme when they say earn this but I want to earn this that’s what I want to do and and I do that when I go in the room with a patient that’s my chance to earn it because that’s a gift everybody does have that there’s a lot of people
You know, that, that think they got it made, but they don’t because it’s those foundational things that make it. It’s not the frills and I’ve got good frills by the way. Thank you. but, that’s, that’s probably the biggest influences that I think I’ve had for, who I am and the way that I work at my job and the way I practice healthcare. We need to get you at least a five or 15 minutes slot to kick off leadership forum. No.
There’s a lot that I could say, what a privilege to listen to this conversation. And Josh, I just want to reiterate that you have earned it, man. Thank you. That means a lot. And I think that people that have invested in you have helped kind of facilitate who you’ve already been in the process of becoming. And then you have paid that forward tenfold. And I think that’s the really beautiful thing about
relationships with people and kind of the vision that Dr. Johnsey had that if I take care of my people, they’re going to take good care of patients. And then you have this cascading ripple effect that goes out and further and further and further. And I think that your story is certainly a testament to that. And I just am proud to know you just from your story and your courage and your humor and your
honesty and I think that you really do emulate what a clinician should aspire to be. I’m floored and this is just a privilege to get to be a part of and I think that in light of all that Josh and kind of who you are, I’m very curious in our current moment in healthcare, everybody knows that it’s broken and it’s really challenging. But what would you say is a particular challenge that you face in your professional environment now?
as you see it? ⁓ So there’s two things that I think that one of the challenges and I think it does come with technology and social media. I think people are more focused on themselves than at any time in our history. Social media every time and I’m guilty of it, know, somebody goes to the gym, you got a picture of it, this is what I’m doing, I did a good deed, you know, here I am. And we have learned to perpetuate the individual. Everything that you do matters.
and it’s important and everybody should comment on every little thing and that’s not the case. You know, there are plenty of things that I don’t have insight on. There are plenty of things that you don’t need my opinion on. You know, if I go to a neurosurgery conference in Orlando, they don’t need me to stand up and make a profound statement. There are some things I’m not educated in and sometimes you have to learn when to speak and when not to speak. Now, saying that, I… ⁓
Kind of on a tangent, but you get this individualistic thing. So a lot of times you’ll see people now where, you know, it’s, it’s, um, there’s kind of a point of contention when you go in the room. And I, I, and I don’t know if even what I said to the buildup or much of that, but, there’s a point of contention that you say a lot of times in the emergency department. And I think it’s a lot of times people are scared and other stuff, but, you say you go into the room and,
There’s the patient who has had this problem for 20 years and I saw this person and they weren’t nice and I didn’t figure it out. This didn’t happen. So today in the emergency department, you’re going to figure this out, right? And then we go in a lot of times and you know, we’re like, you know what I’m going to do is I’m going to prove to them that it’s not what they think it is and I’m going to show them and you can’t expect me to figure everything out and you go in the room with an argument. Right? You know, or you go into the room and they say he’s having a heart attack.
And you know that the patient’s not having a heart attack because you know the patient’s 19 years old and has no medical problems and they’re there because they have a cough, right? But mom is there and she is afraid. So we immediately we think he’s having a heart attack. He’s not having a heart attack and we we are right. We go into the room. We argue. We immediately at the door, even if we’re not, you know, actively acknowledging. Hey, this is an argument. We’re arguing now. We’re still at a head from the time we go.
or this patient’s been there five times for abdominal pain and I’m sick of seeing them and they’re back today and I’m, you know, that kind of thing. So, or the patient may have not had an experience.
You know, a lot of patients, you know, I’d like to call it the white coat of compassion, but a lot of people don’t say that a lot of people have have been around folks that have been rude to him, have listened to him, have paid attention to all these other things. So they don’t associate that or they’ve had a bad experience with people that have several degrees and have MD behind their name or PA behind their name or whatever. So they’re already thinking like, we’re not related. Like there’s there.
We’re you know, we have no connection with one another, right? Like like we’re at odds when in fact we’re not at odds. OK, if you work in health care and you go into a room and somebody’s afraid, you’ve been afraid, right? They’re hurting. You’ve heard right like that goes back to kind of those core things of of of the things in life that connect us. You know the things that everybody has to experience and it’s not, you know. So you go in the room. And you had this big argument.
They’re different from us. We’re different from them. And then it goes downhill from right because there’s no connection at all. So I think what I try to do is go in and take this point of contention no matter whether they to take this point of contention off the table because and I’ve said this to people is look, we want the same things. The patient comes in with chest pain, thinking they’re having a heart attack. They don’t have a heart attack and that I don’t want them to have a heart attack. You know.
They don’t want to come in and have something that gets misdiagnosed. I don’t want to misdiagnose something. don’t want people laughing at me or people, you know, there’s that streak line. There’s this patient again. Of course he missed it. You know, I don’t want to cause those things in people. So I’ll tell them, you know, sometimes or a lot of times I say, look, you know, I’m Josh. I introduced myself. And one thing I’ve started doing is I go in that room and for years I’ve done this. The nurses make fun of me.
As soon as I go in that room, first thing I do is I get on the. Beside, I don’t sit in the chair. I don’t stand up. I go and I get on a knee beside the patient and I get lower than them and I get to a subservient position no matter what, who they are, no matter how old they are. And I get to one. I get love to I get in a position of servitude. And then I also and I listen to I list, you know, for for.
I want, you know, at least a couple of minutes, I just let them talk and I try not to direct them out anything because one, people want to be heard and two, they want to know, you know, whenever you, whenever you come in, they want to know that, that, that you care about and, and, and, and that there is a connection. And so I try to develop kind of that compassion, but I tell people, say, look, I want you to be okay because you’re a human being. I also want you to be okay because I.
have a medical license and family and children and I don’t want to miss something and have to go work in South America somewhere. So I try to be as humble as possible and I try to take the argument away and I try to relate to them on a personal level right off the bat as someone who is going to listen, who’s not arrogant and somebody who’s there to work for them because ultimately that’s why I am there.
But I think that’s a challenge, not arguing, but realizing that we have the same goal as the patient. We’re the same people as the patient. We just got different colors and different hair and other things, but ultimately we’re the same people. ⁓ I think people come to me at a time when they’re afraid, they’re scared.
and it’s my job not to go in there and look at something and be like, I’ll be back in a few hours and they don’t know anything. I try to encourage people and I probably do that to one of the challenges for me probably is I probably do that a little too much. I may be a little bit too optimistic with patients, but if they’re going through something, I want them to think that they can get through it. And so I try to be an encouraging guy who’s somebody that they can be around and feel compassion and feel like, hey, he’s one of us and he cares about us.
I feel that that same way. think that we’ve, you know, the super specialization of medicine, uh, the, complexity of it. We’ve gotten so distant from one another as opposed to, to being in relationship with one another to viewing one another is, is, is a couple of humans working together. You’re right. It’s, it’s become adversarial too much. So, and, I love that trying to, to, to,
engage with each other on that idea that, we want exactly the same thing. That’s, that’s, that’s huge, Josh. So you’ve got a lot of things that you can be proud of in your, in your CV. mean, I, I, I’m jealous, ⁓ as you go through and talk about those things that you have, have, have accomplished. What for you is that thing that you, that you,
You want people to remember when they’re looking through there about you, what is that thing that you say, this is that most important thing about me that you should remember? What’s that thing that’s going to be on the tombstone, in the eulogy, whatever else? What’s that thing that persists about Josh? Well, this would be the one question that I probably don’t
that I don’t have that. I know exactly the answer and it’s it’s it’s this. ⁓ My children have never seen their dad drunk or drink alcohol or with any alcoholic drink in their entire lives. And I at some point in my life, I decided I’m not going to let this is going to stop and it’s not going to go any further and it’s not going to carry on. And in 2011.
I said, I’m not going to drink alcohol again. And I told him, I said, I know people make promises to you and we shouldn’t because we can’t keep them or fall. And I said, but I’m never drinking anything in my entire life again. And so that’s been 14 years ago and my kids have never seen that for me. And that is what I’m most proud of.
I’ve got a daughter that’s 17. She’s almost 18 years old. We start college next year. She’s never seen her dad drink alcohol. She’s never seen him romanticize that kind of culture, that stuff. And I wanted to break. That was something that my family had a long history of. And I wanted to break that. And I wanted to show them what that looked like. And I wanted to show them what it looks like to have a dad who through your whole life, all that stuff that happened with the deaths and all that.
I quit drinking three years before that and I never went and got a drink. I never went and went to some, you know, hotel and felt sorry for myself, you know, disappeared from life for a day. I did some things that needed to be done and I was scared and I prayed and I brought and I realized what that means when it says Jesus says I’ll be made strong in your weakness and he I didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel good.
because life’s not always a feeling. We always think now that everything’s a feeling, you should feel good about everything. Well, you know what? A lot of the stuff you’re supposed to do in life, you don’t feel good about. you feel fear and all these other things. I don’t think Jesus felt real good about dying on the cross when he was on the cross, but that was the one thing that was the most right thing anybody ever did. So I wanted to alleviate that and I wanted
I wanted to make the right decisions for them and I wanted to put an end to that. so when I went through that, I was scared and all these other things, but it was okay and it was gonna be okay. And I’m so proud of that. And I’m so proud that they have never had to wake up to go to a baseball game and didn’t know why daddy passed out on the floor.
or those kind of things that a lot of people see when they grow up in that environment. And my kids have never seen that. And that is absolutely exclusively, I would trade everything I’ve ever done for that. And it means the most to me. And that was a big deal because God helped me to do that. And I cried to him and I said, I want this gone. I want to be someone.
who is dependent on you and and and not this other joke. Can I make mistakes every day? But that’s not a mistake that I make, and I’m not trying to condemn people who you know can go out and have a drink and feel good and go home and do get everything done and have a nice time and go play golf. But that was not the history of my family and I was proud to shut that down and I’m very proud.
that’s something that they have never seen from me because that’s what they deserve. I’m so proud for you. ⁓ That’s huge, especially as we know you better through this conversation. Yes, That’s huge. Yeah, Josh, I’m going to go a little rogue here because most of the time when we wrap up, we ask our guests to prove they’re human, right? It’s kind of like the little thing, like prove you’re human when you’re…
go into a website or whatever, and you got to check all the motorcycles and then you prove you’re human, right? You’ve demonstrated to us and all the listeners that you embody all of the beauty that there is in the world to be human. And your story is a testament to that. And there’s this amazing book that William May wrote called The Physician’s Covenant. It should probably be rewritten to…
the clinicians covenant in the spirit of our high value for advanced practice clinicians in our company. But it talks about the images of the healer and medical ethics. And I think that your story reminds me of this section. And because I am a co-host, sometimes people have to bear with me when I read books. And that’s just kind of part of what you signed up for with this thing. But it says this, and I think that this is Josh Strickland. And I think it is the application of your story.
into how you help heal the people that are privileged enough to come with you. And I will say this beforehand. I would want you to take care of me and my family. And I can’t say that about everybody. I wish I could, but it’s just the world we live in, But I would want Josh Strickland, come hell or high water, to take care of me and my wife and my kids and my mom and dad and my in-laws. And it says this.
Ultimately, the steadfast commitment to protect, nourish, and heal the needy and the sick will falter unless we have some resource for reckoning with the harsh world which our patients so palpably remind us of with the threat of poverty, failure, sickness, and death. This steadfast commitment to the needy and the sick and their cause requires
that we place the harsh world around us in the context of yet another world, more powerful, more plausible, and more gripping, that both deals with the sting of suffering and death and makes it not only possible, tolerable, and imperative, but it invites us to deal with our patients and our own needs in a better way. And Josh Drickland, man, you do that.
Well, I appreciate that. means the world to me. I mean, it means the world to me. I thank you guys for saying that. you may think a little more highly of me than I do, but than I do of myself. But I know I appreciate that. And that means the world to me. And that’s my goal is for people to, you know, I want people to feel that way about me because they saw those the fruits and the labor, you know, and it and I want to be able to it takes effort. And one thing I’ve learned about life is it takes effort.
And you have to be able to be people. I always ask me about special forces. They always ask me, you know, how did you get mad? And I probably say, you know, don’t look like a special forces guy because they envision people with huge, you know, roided out all this stuff. And I tell them, say, you know what? That’s not what it is. Y’all think that that’s what it is. But really, I said, you know what I can do? What me and the guys that I was with, you know what we can do? What? What is it that you can do? All right. I’ll tell you. Stay uncomfortable.
for a long period of time. That’s what that means. It means to be ⁓ in a situation where you’re mentally and physically stressed and be able to hold that pattern, to be able to hold that for an extended period of time, to be mentally tough enough to get through it and to keep working and to keep grinding until you get to the other side.
And that’s what I think takes to excel in everything, you know, and that’s what I think that, you know, in any line of work, you have to be able to be uncomfortable. You know, I see a lot of talk today, you know, about about, you know, there’s a lot of hear a lot of stuff on social media about addiction and don’t hate the person and all this other stuff. And and I always think, yes, I get all that. But that person has to be able to be uncomfortable.
to have things that are maybe obsessive or compulsions to them. And you gotta be able to not make that trip that you made a thousand times to the liquor store. You gotta be able to go back in that patient room, that fifth, sixth, seventh time to get that answer. But you have to be able to be uncomfortable. And we want the relief. I’m discharged. All right, that’s good, let’s discharge. Let’s let them go. Or just go ahead and get the drink. Or just go ahead and do this or that. Or let’s go ahead and just finish that.
that you know, I’ve done enough. But in all of li I can just go home now. B that mile, that extra to have excellence, that e takes to put the bottle d that extra mile that it diagnosis right. It takes You have to be able to get and let that stress and ju that stress going on to m
to make anything happen, to have a relationship with your kids. So that’s what that was the difference. And I think that’s what’s the difference that makes you, know, ⁓ what what people want to be in health care from what they think they are on the internet to who they are. It’s that extra being able to be uncomfortable for someone else and to be a martyr for somebody else. Because every time you walk into that ER or you walk into that hospital, you are a martyr. And so so
That to me is what I think it drives you to excellence and being good at what you do and being able to, you know, sleep at night for me. Yeah. Josh, I’m a better person for knowing you and for listening to this story. And I’m a better clinician for having the chance to work alongside you from time to time. And thanks so much for having the courage to tell the truth, as you said at the very beginning about your story. And we are very thankful that you’re a leader in our organization. Yeah, this was so
⁓ So refreshing to hear your take on your humanity in healthcare, ⁓ to hear ⁓ how the evolution of your story has brought you to where you are and how it shapes your interaction with patients on a daily basis. I think it’s refreshing and it seemed easy for you. It’s always easy for you to talk.
It would not have been nearly as easy for me to share the detail that you did, but I’m so appreciative of you for being so open with us. And I knew a lot of those details. didn’t know all of them. And like I said, I certainly didn’t know the, ⁓ the, the timing of like how 2014 was for you before I got to meet you for the first time. ⁓ and that’s really even made me more appreciative of you and where you’ve come, ⁓
To this day, so thanks for for being so refreshingly honest with us and and for all you do each and every day. Where the banner of rely us so well and I’m just so proud to have you as part of our team and thanks for spending so much time with us today. I thank you so much and that means the world and I really I really appreciate everything that y’all have said and your confidence in me that that makes it makes getting up. It makes life.
you know, worthwhile for me. The wife and the kids, they make it worthwhile. They’re wonderful. I’ve got great ones. But also when I have to get in that car and I have to drive to Mississippi, like I’ve done thousands of times, I don’t feel like I’m leaving home. I still feel like I’m driving home no matter which way I go. And that to me means everything. And then brother.
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