PA Mindset Matters

What does compassionate, stigma-free addiction care look like in clinical practice?

In this episode of PA Mindset Matters, hosts Jessica Spissinger and Mercedes Dodge welcome Karen Haessler, PA-C, an addiction medicine PA who shares her journey from paramedicine to building a hospital-wide addiction consult service.

Karen offers practical insights into managing alcohol withdrawal, treating opioid use disorder, initiating medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), and navigating emerging substance use trends, including kratom and fentanyl adulterants.

The conversation explores addiction care during pregnancy, perioperative buprenorphine management, harm reduction, and the importance of nonjudgmental language in building therapeutic relationships.

Packed with clinical pearls and resources for PAs across specialties, this episode reminds us that compassionate addiction care starts with how we approach our patients.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is common, complex, and often under recognized. In this Mini Mindset episode of PA Mindset Matters, hosts Jessica Spissinger and Mercedes Dodge deliver a focused, practical overview of AUD and the essential clinical knowledge every PA should have.

From screening tools and risk factors to recognizing intoxication, managing withdrawal, and identifying life-threatening complications, this episode covers the fundamentals of AUD. We also explore CIWA-Ar, thiamine, SBIRT, and medication options, including naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram.

Whether you practice in primary care, emergency medicine, psychiatry, or another specialty, this episode offers practical insights to help you recognize AUD and provide compassionate, evidence-based care.

In this episode of The PA Mindset Matters podcast, hosts PA Mercedes Dodge and PA Jessica Spissinger speak with Katie Hodson, PA, an outpatient psychiatry clinician in Wilmington, North Carolina, who focuses on opioid use disorder and co-occurring conditions such as PTSD, stimulant use disorder, anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Katie discusses integrating addiction treatment with psychiatric care, using a collaborative, nonjudgmental approach that sets expectations, avoids punitive responses, and emphasizes meeting patients where they are. She reflects on her path to become a PA and her current clinical work focusing on psychosocial rehabilitation, addresses stigma from families and misconceptions about buprenorphine (including perioperative concerns), and highlights how public policy, housing, food insecurity, and insurance instability drive mental health and substance use outcomes. She also describes close collaboration with therapists, setting boundaries to prevent burnout, and self-care through family, exercise, faith, and grace.

When depression, anxiety, insomnia, inattention, or mood instability shows up alongside substance use, the clinical picture can get complicated fast.

In this Mini Mindset episode of PA Mindset Matters, we explore how intoxication, withdrawal, rebound symptoms, and neuroadaptation can mimic psychiatric illness—and why good clinical reasoning requires more than matching symptoms to a diagnosis.

We discuss:

The clinical question we keep coming back to:

What is the substance doing to the clinical picture?

And before treating the symptom, ask:

What is driving these symptoms—and what does this patient need treated today?

Listen for practical, clinician-to-clinician insights you can bring back to primary care, psychiatry, and everyday mental health practice.

Follow PA Mindset Matters for more Mini Mindsets and conversations on practical psychiatry, behavioral health, and the reminder that Every PA is a Psych PA.

Addiction medicine touches nearly every area of healthcare, yet many clinicians receive limited training in recognizing and treating substance use disorders.

In this episode of PA Mindset Matters, Jessica Spissinger, PA-C, LICSW, CAQ-Psych, and Mercedes Dodge, MPAS, PA-C, CAQ-Psych, sit down with Kerith Hartmann, MPAS, PA-C, an addiction medicine PA at Oregon Health & Science University.

Kerith works across inpatient addiction medicine consultation and outpatient care for patients with substance use disorders, complex chronic illness, and overlapping pain concerns. She is also a board member of the Society for Addiction Medicine of PAs and a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers.

One of her strongest messages:

“Learn motivational interviewing—really learn it. Not the concept, the practice.”

In this conversation, we discuss:

• opioid, alcohol, and stimulant use disorders

Kerith also shares the personal and professional experiences that led her into this field and reminds us that clinicians do not have to identify as addiction specialists to make a meaningful difference for patients with substance use disorders.

Listen to the full conversation on PA Mindset Matters and share it with a colleague who cares for patients affected by substance use.

Also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

#PAMindsetMatters #AddictionMedicine #MotivationalInterviewing #SubstanceUseDisorder #PhysicianAssociate

You don’t have to work in addiction medicine to care for patients with substance use disorders.

Substance use shows up across healthcare—from psychiatry and primary care to emergency medicine, pediatrics, and hospital settings—and it often intersects with anxiety, insomnia, trauma, depression, chronic pain, and relationship stress.

In this Mini Mindset episode, Jessica Spissinger and Mercedes Dodge break down practical ways clinicians can recognize substance use disorder, reduce stigma, and feel more confident starting the conversation.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why shifting from “Why won’t you stop?” to “What is this substance doing for you?” can change the clinical encounter

Substance use disorder is not a failure of willpower. It is a treatable medical condition influenced by biology, environment, learning, trauma, relationships, and the brain’s reward system.

And treatment does not always begin in an addiction clinic.

Sometimes it begins with one clinician asking the right question and creating a safe space for an honest conversation.

Listen now and follow PA Mindset Matters for more Mini Mindset episodes translating psychiatry, behavioral health, and neuroscience into practical clinical care. 

What happens when we identify opioid use disorder—but the patient still can’t access treatment?

In this episode of PA Mindset Matters, Mercedes Dodge and Jessica Spissinger sit down with Arianna Campbell, DMSc, MPH, PA-C, CAQ-EM, DFAAPA, a PA with more than 25 years of emergency medicine experience and nearly a decade working in addiction medicine and healthcare systems change.

Arianna shares how a simple question in the emergency department—What are we actually going to do when we identify opioid use disorder?—helped launch work that eventually grew into California Bridge and expanded addiction treatment access across hospitals and communities.

We discuss:

• Buprenorphine and evidence-based opioid use disorder treatment

Arianna reminds us that improving addiction care is not only about knowing the evidence—it is about creating systems where patients can actually access it.

“We need to make it easier for people to get care.”

Listen now on PA Mindset Matters.

Hosts Mercedes Dodge and Jessica Spissinger of PA Mindset Matters reflect on wrapping their second season, highlighting interviews largely recorded at the inaugural PA Institute collaboration between Psych Congress and AAPA and previewing its return in early December in Orlando. They discuss their mission to connect psychiatric PAs and share standout guest takeaways. They note psych PA presence at AAPA, announce next season starting fall 2026 focusing on substance use, invite guests via pamindset.com, and thank APAP and supporters while sharing slide access through membership.

In medicine, it’s easy to focus on diagnoses, treatment plans, and checklists.

But some of the most meaningful moments in care happen when we pause long enough to see the person beyond them.

In this episode of Mindset Matters, we sit down with a leader in psychiatry to explore what it truly means to care for patients with intellectual and developmental differences—and how these experiences reshape the way we practice medicine as a whole.

This conversation goes beyond career paths. It’s about humanity in care—and the responsibility we carry as clinicians to approach patients with curiosity, compassion, and respect for their lived experience.

We explore:

This episode is a reminder that some of the most impactful care we provide doesn’t come from having the right answer—

It comes from being willing to see, listen, and understand more deeply.

Whether you work in psychiatry or another specialty, this conversation will challenge you to think differently about what it means to truly care for your patients.

In this Mini Mindset episode, we explore the often-overlooked connection between menopause, perimenopause, and mental health.

Many women present with symptoms that look like depression or anxiety—but what if the underlying driver is hormonal?

We discuss:

We also highlight insights from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) and why clinicians need a broader lens when treating midlife patients.

This is a conversation about curiosity, validation, and better care for women in transition.