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For this solo episode, I share my experience as a patient navigating the mental healthcare system. This episode highlights the importance of self-advocacy, empowerment, and shared decision-making in an ever-advancing, and continuously complicated world.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Dominick Ramos
Dominick Ramos is a health worker and student with clinical experience in dermatology, surgery, oncology, and community health. He is completing a Bachelor of Professional Studies in Health Science Management at the University of Virginia, with plans to apply to medical school. His research interests include health disparities and equity, care delivery models, and surgical oncology with a focus on head and neck cancers and cutaneous malignancies.
Dominick is the host and creator of Scrub Talk, a podcast dedicated to finding humanity in medicine, one story at a time.
SHOW NOTES
During the pandemic, I finally did something I'd been putting off for years — I established care with a primary care provider. What followed was a months-long battle to access the medication I needed, a psychiatric provider who stopped returning my calls, and a prior authorization process I had to fight through almost entirely on my own. And I did all of that while being on Medicaid, working in healthcare, and coming from a culture that never really made space for mental health in the first place.
This episode is about what it actually takes to navigate a system that wasn't designed to make things easy. It's about the panic attacks I couldn't name, the moment a PHQ questionnaire cracked something open that I'd been carrying for years, and the first time I took Vyvanse and grieved everything I realized I could have had sooner.
But it's also about what I learned on the other side of it — about self-advocacy, about showing up for yourself even when the system doesn't show up for you, and about why none of us should have to fight this hard just to get the care we need.
Transcript