Vitally Stable: A Pre-Health Podcast

Vitally Stable: A Pre-Health Podcast

Rated the 3rd Best Minnesota Education Podcast and 3rd Best Minnesota Medical Podcast of 2025 by FeedSpot. Vitally Stable is an educational podcast specifically designed for the pre-health student and their future career in the medical field. It is hosted by Ryan Rivard, a Physician Assistant that graduated from Augsburg University and has a deep passion for supporting the pre-health community. While attempting to be the leader that he believed he needed during his challenging pre-health journey, Ryan's main missions through Vitally Stable are to educate pre-health students on the medical career options avialable to them, provide them with accessbile resources to pursue their chosen career path, and tackle the mental health crisis that exists within the pre-health world. Through a partnership with the University of Minnesota Emergency Medical Services (UMEMS) and co-hosts Kaydi and Katherine, Ryan is creating a platform of support for the pre-health community through the Vitally Stable Podcast. So, if you are considering a career in MD, DO, PA, Nursing, Public Health, or any of the other amazing medical careers, give Vitally Stable a listen today. If you are considering a career as a Physician Assistant specifically and would value from a Pre-PA mentorship group directly led by Ryan, then reach out to ryan@vitallystable.com to see if you can become a member of The PAck today!

Episodes

July 23, 2025 358 mins
Have you ever wondered what rotations are actually like? Well, if you have, then you are not alone. As a mentor to many pre-health students, Ryan has always tried to offer the best advice he could, but he never felt like he had the perfect answer to this question. After a lot of research and searching of other pre-health content platforms with little result, Ryan realized that there was huge gap in resources discussing the day-to-d...
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Have you ever wondered what rotations are actually like? Well, if you have, then you are not alone. As a mentor to many pre-health students, Ryan has always tried to offer the best advice he could, but he never felt like he had the perfect answer to this question. After a lot of research and searching of other pre-health content platforms with little result, Ryan realized that there was huge gap in resources discussing the day-to-d...
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Have you ever wondered what rotations are actually like? Well, if you have, then you are not alone. As a mentor to many pre-health students, Ryan has always tried to offer the best advice he could, but he never felt like he had the perfect answer to this question. After a lot of research and searching of other pre-health content platforms with little result, Ryan realized that there was huge gap in resources discussing the day-to-d...
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In another addition to the Let's Chat Series, we are going to be discussing the Radiologic Technologist career with our amazing guest: Ben Hillebrand, who spent over 5 years working hard and excelling within this field before his decision to pursue the Physician Assistant program at Augsburg University in Minnesota. Ben is an active promotor of the "rad tech" profession and on top of his extensive knowledge of all the imaging caree...
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In this special addition to the Collaboration Corner series, you will get the opportunity to join Ryan as he was honored to participate in a PA Student Panel at this year's National Pre-Health Commiunity (NPHC) annual conference on May 19th alongside guest of Vitally Stable Episode 15: Madie Petry. This truly was an incredible experience for us! We hope you enjoy the audio recording of this session that was gratiously provided to u...
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The Daily Vitalmins episode type is back! In this special episode, Ryan is joined by one of his longest and closest friends, Zach Farhat, where he gets the incredbile opportunity to dive deep into a topic that nearly every pre-health student struggles with today: How To Have Fun While Pursuing Your Career. Using Ryan's personally designed "Chill PILL" tool as a guide, Ryan and Zach partake in one of the deepest and most real conver...
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It's all about the drugs in this addition to the Let's Chat Series where we focus on the career of the Pharmacist with our wonderful guest: Jules Schlichting-Bader. With a journey into pharmacy that started as early as high school, Jules enlightens us on what it's like to grow up and succeed within the world of pharmacy while also offering us unique insight into the power of making a large career decision before undergrad. While he...
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In this episode, you will gain exclusive audio access to the educational component of a recent PAck workshop where the focus was on the diversity of PA programs across the country and how an applicant should go about choosing which ones to apply to. Through the introduction and use of Ryan’s newly created SPAM Technique, our hope is that you will come away from this episode with a better understanding of the most important componen...
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In the first Collaboration Corner episode of the Vitally Stable Podcast, Ryan and alternative co-host Katherine got the wonderful opportunity to sit down and chat all things pre-health with Alexia Childress, who is the CEO and Founder of the National Pre-Health Community (NPHC) as well as the host of Pre-Health Pod. On top of pursuing her own medical school journey, Lexi has made it her mission to help as many pre-health students a...
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In another addition to the Let's Chat Series, we are going to be discussing the Athletic Trainer career with our wonderful guests: Julia Carr and Eric Caloud, who each spent multiple years mastering their skills in different settings through this career before their eventual pursuit and acceptance into the Augsburg PA program. Julia and Eric each wear their passion for Athletic Training on their sleeve in this episode which makes t...
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In our first addition of the "PArt of the PAck" series, you will get the opportunity to listen in with the PAck as they dive deep into the world of emergency medicine with our incredible guest: Eric Van Hecke, who spent many years working in multiple emergency medicine settings as a PA before eventually becoming a core faculty member for the Augsburg PA Program. Even if you aren't pursuing PA but are considering a specialty in emer...
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In another addition to the Let's Chat Series, we are going to be discussing the Respiratory Therapist career with our incredible guest: Kim Day, who spent over a decade mastering her skills in this career before her eventual pursuit and acceptance into the Augsburg PA program. On top of being an expert in the field of Respiratory Therapy, Kim’s story is nothing like anything we have had on this podcast before and her openness and r...
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On March 29th, 2023, Ryan was honored to be invited to come speak to the University of Minnesota Pre-PA Organization about his medical journey as well as share with its UMN Pre-PA members any experiential knowledge that he had acquired along the way. With this opportunity, Ryan was excited to unveil some of his favorite self-created pre-health tools and acronyms that allowed him to succeed in his journey: The Door vs. Key Analogy, ...
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In another addition to the Let's Chat Series, we are going to be discussing the Medical Sonographer career with our wonderful guest: Tori Koopman, who spent multiple years mastering her skills in this career before her eventual pursuit and acceptance into the Augsburg PA program. The world of medical imaging is complex and ever-evolving, so we were honored to be able to learn more about it from the first-hand experiences of someone...
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In our second UMEMS Member Spotlight episode, we were excited to borrow the time of another volunteer UMEMS member: Matthew Zimring, who provided us with our first opportunity to talk in depth with a member of the Pre-Med community and we were not disappointed. While being one of Ryan's favorite personalities, Matthew was able to provide us with an incredible first-hand experience of the many obstacles that Pre-Med students face in...
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This episode will be Part 3 of a 3-part episode series where the overall topic will be discussing everything you need to know about PA Programs. In Part 3, we will attempt to answer the question: "What does a PA Program Academic Education Look & Feel Like?” Continuing the trend of this series, Ryan was joined by two more of his hardworking classmates: Brittany Noble and Zach Ekstein, with the goal of tackling this large and com...
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This episode will be Part 2 of a 3-part episode series where the overall topic will be discussing everything you need to know about PA Programs. In Part 2, we will attempt to answer the question: "What do PA applicants look for in PA programs?" Due to the complexity and variation regarding the answer to this question, Ryan was very thankful to be able to borrow the valuable time of two of his hardworking Augsburg PA classmates: Jen...
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This episode will be Part 1 of a 3-part episode series where the overall topic will be discussing everything you need to know about PA Programs. In Part 1, we will attempt to answer the question: "What do PA programs look for in PA applicants?" To assist in answering this important question, Ryan was honored to be able to sit down with Dr. Vanessa Bester, who is the Program Director for the Augsburg University PA Program. If you ar...
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In our first ever Bonus episode, we will bringing the March Madness Bracket Season to the month of May with the hopes of crowning "The Most Stressful Pre-Health Application Component". A lot of multi-disciplinary communication and collaboration throughout the months of March and April went into the creation of this episode design so we hope you enjoy its final result as much as we did. We would like to extend a big shoutout to the ...
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For all you future Doctors listening, we have the episode for you! In our first episode of Season 2 and our 6th episode of the Let's Chat Series, we were honored to be able to sit down with and pick the brains of an experienced panel of successful MCAT test takers. Brian Lewis from "Let's Chat DO!" and Akshat Sarkari from "Let's Chat MD!" make their return to the podcast as our first ever two-time guests and they are joined by firs...
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