A Servant's Heart: Dr. Olatunde Oshikoya on Leading with Passion

What happens when you stop waiting for the “right path” and start building your own? In this episode of Building Bridges, Dr. Olatunde Oshikoya, PA-C, shares how an uncertain start as a new graduate evolved into a purpose-driven career spanning urgent care, mobile medicine, and telehealth in addiction and behavioral health. From launching a mobile clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic to embracing remote care as the future of medicine, his journey highlights the power of adaptability, innovation, and saying yes to opportunity—even when the outcome isn’t clear. 

This conversation explores how telehealth is reshaping access to care, allowing providers to meet patients where they are—literally and figuratively—while maintaining the core principles of medicine. Dr. Oshikoya also shares his passion for mentorship and community impact, emphasizing the importance of looking inward, leveraging your network, and stepping up to meet needs in your own community. 

Whether you’re a clinician, student, or educator, this episode is a reminder that meaningful careers aren’t linear—they’re built through openness, discomfort, and a willingness to act.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to Building Bridges, the podcast from Butler University's Doctor of Medical Science Bridge program. I'm your host today, Bree Garbus, and we're so glad you're here. This podcast is all about connection, bringing together voices from across healthcare, education, leadership, and beyond. Whether you're a practicing PA, a student, an educator, or someone just passionate about where healthcare is headed, this space is for you. Today we are joined by Dr. Olatunday Oshikoya, PAC from Atlanta, Georgia, and I am super excited to bring some of his story to you.

unknown 0:33

Dr.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Oshikoya and I have known each other since my first year as a faculty member, and I still feel like I should probably just stop and thank you for putting up with me learning how to be a faculty member because he got to experience my very first year as a teacher. So sorry about that. And he's been an incredible example of how to take opportunity and just really completely make the PA world his own. Let me give everyone a brief overview of Dr. Ochoi's background and accomplishments. He's a 2018 graduate of the UF PA program and a 2025 graduate of the AT Still DMS program. He's a staunch advocate for mental and behavioral health and founded the Rapid Recovery Mobile Clinic in 2021, providing accessible treatment to Metro Atlanta and surrounding areas. He's the director of health and wellness for the Janae Benito Foundation and is committed to service as an advisor to the Best Academy Mentorship Committee with the Emerging 100 of Atlanta. In addition, he was awarded the Emerging 100 of Atlanta's Mentor of the Year and Committee of the Year in 2024. He's an active member of Lead Atlanta, Outstanding Atlanta, and a life member of the Alpha Pi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. That's a list. That's a long list. You just hit the ground rolling after graduation and just freight trained. Never, never stop. So I would love to first congratulate you on such an incredible career and accomplishment in and what's really a very short time. So I'm just so proud and happy to have been in your academic career first and to still get to know you. So way to go. Absolutely amazing. I would love to talk about your clinical background first. So you started in the emergency room and urgent care, but you've most heavily invested in mental and behavioral health. So could you tell me a little bit about your journey there and the force behind your love for that field?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah. Well, first and foremost, thank you for that warm introduction. I think I need some water myself, just listening to all of that. But yeah, no, I definitely appreciate the platform and I appreciate the direction that Butler is heading in. So thank you for having me. Regarding my PA journey, yeah, I think when I graduated in 2018 from the University of Florida, to be quite honest with you, I didn't take to any one specialty. You know, I went through didactic year, I went through clinical year, and I did all the things. And when I graduated, I said, yeah, I still don't know, you know, and and I think at that time I had a little bit of like imposter syndrome and insecurity about that. But in hindsight, I think it led me to exactly where I needed to be today. Um the Monday after graduation, I actually got hired with the local urgent care out in Newbury, Florida, and I was working, uh I was working pretty much full-time as a PA. It was just me and two medical assistants, and I think that was the perfect place for me. I had all the autonomy, all of the ability to learn. I was seeing my own cases, I was managing low to mid-acuity type patients, and it allowed me to just refine my clinical decision making in a way that I don't think I would have been able to in any other setting, especially as a new grad. Um, so to yeah, so to be able to be in that space, and then I was doing PRN work at the local ER and getting some clinical experience there. So to be able to combine the two as a new grad was a wealth of of knowledge for me. And then COVID-19 happened, and that gave me the opportunity to kind of just like take a beat, see what I wanted to do, and I ended up relocating back to Atlanta, Georgia in 2019, and that's kind of where I am, or 2020, I should say, and that's where I am now. And yeah, I was continuing working in the urgent care space, and as the pandemic was happening, you know, the world looked completely different. You know, I remember one day I was looking around and you know, I'm talking to my medical assistants. I'm like, hey, there's no patients here. Like, what's what's going on? And then it just kind of dawned on me that, yeah, everybody's sheltering in place. So um, you know, it kind of sparked an idea in my mind to say, like, well, what can we do to make urgent care mobile, right? Like, what can we do to bring help? If patients can't come to me, how can I come to them? So started doing some research, looking up some local medical equipment shops, and I said, Oh, yeah, I can, you know, purchase a blood pressure cuff and I can get some urine drug screen cups and I can do all the prescribing myself. So, yeah, you know, let me give this a shot. And yeah, Rapid Recovery Mobile Clinic came out of that. It was just me and my two friends, Eli and Keelan. Eli helped me build out a whole app that patients could use to schedule appointments, and then Keelan built up my website. So over the course of like two to three years, I was doing that full time. And as things started to kind of like reopen and get normalized again, I think again, another opportunity to take a beat, see what I wanted out of my career. And from there, I decided that remote work is the direction for me. I think working in that capacity, as far as being able to see patients remotely out of my vehicle and meeting them at their house and all in all these different like locations. Um, I think I saw a new horizon for healthcare. Bedside medicine started to expand for me. I started to realize that, oh, medicine can look very different depending on how you go about it. Did some research on remote opportunities and everything that I saw led me to addiction medicine or psychiatry, addiction medicine or psychiatry. And I said, okay, if I'm gonna do this, let me really commit myself to it. Started, you know, going to YouTube, same thing that I did during PA school. I used different resources, study, going back to the books, and I got to a place where I was really comfortable with the knowledge I would need to pursue a career in psychiatry. At the time, there was an X waiver certification. It was a 24-hour course. The first section was 16 hours, the following section was eight hours, and then you take an exam. And in order to prescribe Syboxin, which is the medication you need to manage opioid use disorder, at the time you needed the X waiver certification. But uh, under the Biden administration, they did away with it. But I took that course, passed, got my certification, and thankfully there is an employer out there that saw my resume, saw the urgent care experience, the ER experience, and decided to give me an opportunity. And from there, I started working remotely from 2022 till now. And I just appreciate the opportunity to be at the intersection of healthcare and technology and to be able to meet patients where they are wholeheartedly and to do all the things that I do has just been such a joy. And I really feel like I'm in my purpose. I don't see myself working in any other specialty. I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be. And I, you know, truly love it.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

That's absolutely incredible. I think one of the things that jumps out to me the most is you came out, you started out working almost completely solo as a brand new graduate. And that that that takes some moderate degree of bravery, I think, to come in. Newberry is uh not a large city in Florida. Newberry is a slightly rural area, so you're going to have a decent amount of interesting cases come through there. So that had to help with growing your clinical acumen and your confidence in yourself. But I love that as you grew as a PA and you move back to Atlanta, and we know Atlanta's huge, Metro Atlanta is a good size area, and then you see this need. Okay, here I am. I'm as a PA, as a leader in my community, as someone who wants to give back to my community, I see this need. And what can I do? What can I do myself to go out and meet this need? And then you just moved on it. You didn't look around and wait for someone else or hey, somebody should do something about this. It was, I see a need, what can I do to fill it? And I think that's probably one of the things that jumps out to me the most during that was what can I do? And that's something that I think PAs are uniquely equipped to do that. What can I do? And I look at so many things in your background and I see that with you. What can I do? And there there isn't any waiting around. It is you're moving out to to take care of these things. I want to move into a new field, a new, what do I need to do it? Boom, jump, move. I don't think there's a whole lot of downtime in your life.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

No, not so much, but it's purpose-filled. And I think when you're following your purpose, you don't count the minutes that is are going by. You don't count the days or the weeks or the months, you just go. And I am just so grateful to be in this position to be able to impact to the degree that I do. I'm licensed in over 12 different states, and to be seeing patients from behind a single TV computer screen, I just don't think was something that was uh being promoted like in the early 2000s or even No, we do a block in psychiatry.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

There's what a couple it's one of the shortest blocks of medicine that we teach. It's not something that has a huge emphasis. So it is a section of medicine that requires a lot of a personal go out and learn it and put attention into it. But it and telehealth was not something that we taught. I now it's a standard, it's an accreditation standard for students to have telehealth teaching, but it was absolutely not something that we taught you in PA school.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah, but I think that's just like a reflection of the direction we're heading in as a healthcare system and as a society. Everything is or most things can be done remotely electronically. So to be again, to be at the forefront of that conversation, leading um in a way that's meaningful and impactful and tangible each and every day is just really uh rewarding and it's truly just been a joy.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

I love that about where medicine is headed. I think one of the good things to come out of the terrible thing that was COVID. Because I really like looking for the difficult the opportunistic thing out of the difficult thing. And COVID was terrible. It was a terrible thing, but we learned a lot of great objects out of it, really. And one of those was we can reach more people than we ever thought we could. We can teach in different ways, we can do medicine programs through hybrid, and we didn't think we could do that before, and now we have hybrid PA programs coming up, and that's awesome because we can reach so many more really deserving and incredible students, and we couldn't do that as much before. And we can take telehealth, which was really in certain areas or maybe just starting, we can do telehealth and patients that have transportation issues, patients that have a really difficult time getting out of their home. I do in-home primary care for patients that have difficult have physical conditions that just make getting up is a half days event. Or patients that are just super uncomfortable leaving their house. They leaving their house takes several days worth of thinking about it, right? It's hard for them. So we can make that section of life easier. I think there are so many things that I can't make easier for a patient or make better for a patient, but I can make that better. You can make that better. And I I love that about telehealth that we can improve it. There are lots of bonuses to remote work too. Cutting down that commute is phenomenal, and I'm a huge fan of that plan. My five-minute commute down the down from my kitchen to my office is pretty incredible. I won't complain about that.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, I remember as a new grad, so again, I was working out of the urgent care space. It was multiple locations. So not only did I work in Newbury, I also worked in Williston and Inverness. And if you're familiar with North Florida, Inverness was at least, if I remember correctly, 45 minutes to an hour from Gainesville both ways. So I I do not miss the commute that I appreciated being in my home.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Absolutely, absolutely. I drove to a location on Wednesday morning, and the hour drive took an hour and twenty because I was stuck behind the tractor for fall harvest season. So when I tell students about tractor jams, I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

I would love to talk a little bit about your involvement and mentorship and leadership with our next generation. So can you tell me a little bit about what your passion project is there?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah, so I think along the way of me going to school and just like getting my degree, I always felt a responsibility to pour back into the next generation. I always knew that it was bigger than me. Um, so mentorship has always been a part of that conversation just as much as me pursuing PA school. So I'm currently a member of the Emerging 100 of Atlanta and I serve as the advisor to our Best Academy committee. And for those who are unfamiliar, Best Academy is the only all-male STEM program in the entire state of Georgia. And every year we go into the program and we mentor the senior students there. We expose them to different internship opportunities. We have great relationships with our corporate partners, whether it be a Delta Airlines, a Microsoft, a Google, and we build those bridges. And not only do we expose them to those opportunities, we also prepare them for life after high school graduation. So we talk about financial literacy, we go over their resumes, we talk about college and what that looks like. We even explore trade school opportunities for those who may not want to pursue college. Mentoring that group of students each and every year has also been a joy for me. And I'm grateful that the PA profession allows me the ability to also pursue that passion of mine and be in the community just as much as I am in clinic.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

It's so important. I remember in my high school rural area, I don't think anyone ever talked about really truly life after high school. There were very limited opportunities in the area. There were very, very few people that came in and truly talked to us other than we had our military recruiters, phenomenal career, absolutely phenomenal career. We had military recruiters, we had a couple of folks from the police department and the fire academy come in. But there really weren't a lot of discussions about the STEM fields. If you ended up there, it's because maybe a teacher took a special interest in you. And those relationships were are so important to have someone say, Hey, did you know this was out there? Here's how you do these things. Because if no one in your family's ever walked through it, it's it's confusing. It's really confusing to start navigating those processes.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Yeah. So we we serve as that bridge and we work with the parents too, and we work with the school board and we work with the staff there at the school. We take all of our unique lived experiences to really give these students the vision and the opportunity to think outside of themselves and dream bigger. You know, sometimes we place these limitations on ourselves for whatever reason, whether it's the self-talk or the external responses. But I really do believe that when you're exposed to things early enough, um, your vision and whatever you can achieve in life is is truly limitless. So to be able to just be a small piece of that and fit into that puzzle piece has really been a reward.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

It's incredible. You were always involved in helping your classmates when you were in school.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Oh, was it?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

I think that's an innate aspect of you is uh is to put that out there and to be that helper. And then you take students.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I do, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Yeah, and I mean telehealth is something that was a we weren't teaching eight years ago, and now we are. So what is what do you think you have to do differently from someone who might be thinking, I I think I would love to, I do telehealth and I would maybe like to take a student, but I have no idea how I would work with a student in the telehealth setting. What would you tell that listener who's considering it? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah, so I've served as a preceptor as well for about the last year. And again, that was another opportunity that just came to me and it made sense. It aligned with my mission and what I believe my purpose on this earth is to be. I actually have two students starting on Monday. Um yes, I'm big on educating. But I think the is getting students to maybe understand that medicine remotely is still medicine, right? I think they're still trying to gain their bearings and they're still trying to understand what they can do, what they can't do, who they can see, who they shouldn't see, and that whole idea of like triaging low to mid acuity versus okay, this patient might need an ER referral. So being able to like just walk them through that and educate them and allow them their own autonomy to develop their own way of doing things too, right? I don't want to necessarily hold their hand through this experience. Um, I want to see them grow. And more often than not, by the end of the rotation, there's nothing but hope in their eyes and excitement. And man, I can't believe the rotation is already over. And so we see a great deal of patients, very acute patients that are dealing with alcohol withdrawal, opioid withdrawal, potential seizures, right? It's very you're gonna learn a lot, you're gonna do a lot, you're gonna see a lot, but at the core of that is still medicine. The first rule is still do no harm. So just because we're behind this computer screen, we still have a responsibility to that patient sitting across from us. So uh I do my best to stress that throughout the rotation, and uh they they tend to do well.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

That's awesome. Uh that's medicine in its core just moves settings, but it doesn't change.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

The workflow is the workflow. I am unfortunately old enough to remember when the mandate came out from paper, like you're your all practices will have to have an electronic medical record system. And so that's dating me a little bit. But I remember switching from paper to electronic when the you must change over. And that was a big deal at the time. Well, how are we gonna practice medicine? Medicine. You're still gonna practice it the same way. The documentation style changes a little bit, but you're still practicing the same way. So, you know, you're 100% right at its heart, medicine remains medicine. And you can work with your student in the same regards. I think you do have to work a little harder to make that connection sometimes. So when I'm seeing somebody over telehealth, I have to like really focus on I'm not looking down, I'm not type, I'm working on connecting with that patient and not something else that can happen. But I also think sometimes the patient's much more comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Because they're in their home setting and I'm coming into their world, not their coming into my world. So I think it offers a unique benefit for the patient.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah. Having having having spent like four to five years doing bedside medicine, and then also I'm coming up on about four to five years now doing remote.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

I think, yeah, the benefits on this side are endless. You should see patients in clinic that were just anxious for the simple fact that they're in clinic, right? They might have had a long day, they might have had to take off work, maybe they've had to find a caregiver for their child. Um, it's a it can be a stressful experience just getting to clinic. So to be able to see patients on this side, I've seen patients picking up their good, and I've seen patients before a dental procedure and they're sitting on the procedure table. Yes. So it's it's I become part of their lives versus being this inconvenience. I think the more that we can incorporate technology, whether it be through telehealth experience or asynchronous encounters, I think the better will ultimately be.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

I love what you said about the more we can become part of their lives. That's I think that the integration of medicine as a routine part of a patient's life and not to something sub thought about as a as an extra thing. I have to do this. It's something that you need to help you be the best person at the best peak of your Health that you can be. And yeah, it making it not an inconvenience is really important because that trek across town, right? That clinic may be 15 red lights from now.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

And you're thinking, and the provider's running behind, and I have to get across town to pick up so and so, or I didn't let the dog out on time and I'm coming home to uh-oh. So yeah, the more we can become part of that patient's life, the better for everyone, because that also opens up dialogue.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Absolutely. So when you're thinking about your experience, thinking back on your experience from new graduate to now, I'm going to ask you, what would you tell a new graduate starting at? What would be your best piece of advice for a new graduate?

unknown 22:48

Hard.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Yeah. I would say stay open. And when I say that, I mean stay open to any possibility of your career. When I started out, I did not have this vision for myself. I really didn't even have the vision of going to UF, to be quite honest with you. I think, yeah, I think life takes you where you need to be. And I think if you are rigid with that and you don't allow yourself to just experience life as it is, you maybe miss out on the opportunities and the places that you need to be to impact. So the more that you can just stay open, be uncomfortable and be comfortable with being uncomfortable, like study, learn, be at the top of your field, be at the top of whatever it is you do, because at the end of that is somebody that's receiving uh the impact and receiving the benefit of you committing yourself to that. So that's why I went back and I got my doctorate. Even when I was at UF, I didn't consider a doctor of medical science pathway for me. I'm like, oh, if I have my master's, I'm okay. Um and at 24, 25, I was okay with that. But at 33 and now 34, with the work that I do, I feel beholden to my patients. I feel beholden to my community to advance my career to the best of my ability to study as much as I can, to learn as much as I can so that I can do as much as I can while I'm here. Um, so that would ultimately be the message that I tell new grads is to just stay open. You might go into PA school thinking you want to do ortho. And if you do want to do ortho, that's fine. My oldest brother is an orthopedist, so I definitely get it. But don't close yourself off to potential opportunities, especially if they make sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Awesome. Awesome, thank you. I love that you say to be to be comfortable being uncomfortable. It's one of my favorite phrases because when we stop growing, when you are comfortable, life just starts passing with by you instead of you going with it. And that's when we close ourselves off to those opportunities. I think you've said yes a lot. And there are absolutely times in life when you do have to have a season of saying, not right now. It's not necessarily a no forever, but it's a no today. But for the vast majority of our lives, I think we tend to say no because we are unwe're scared of the outcome or because it's going to be hard. Saying no because you're in a season of taking care of someone or there's something happening in your life at that moment health-wise. But for the vast majority, say yes. Yeah, say yes because you have so many more opportunities when you say yes and try it. Go out there and say, what do I need to be successful? How do I learn and grow from this opportunity? It's so many more amazing chances where you may end up finding something that you love and then love some more. You never know.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah, yeah. And I think what allows you to live life in that way is when you are able to detach yourself from the outcome all the time. I think healthcare is rooted in outcomes. Everything that we do is measured by the health outcome. And even in school, it's the it's the grades, right? You're getting measured all the time. So even when you make a 98, you're wondering what happened to those two points. Like that's that that was the outcome that I attached myself to going into this room. Where are my two points? And in reality, if you just take a step back, you're probably one of three uh students out of a cohort of 60 to make a 90 plus. So while you're wishing for two more points, there's somebody next to you that's like, what just happened?

SPEAKER_02 26:28

That's the vast majority of it, actually. Yes. Somebody is God, I'm so glad I got a 70. Yeah. Thank you. That was me in PA school, by the way. Thank you out of the 70. Oh my gosh. I made it.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Me too.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

I made it.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

But people do absolutely. You're not wrong. People hang up on the why didn't I get this exact outcome instead of I was able to have this experience. And I was able to learn these wonderful things from this experience. Why didn't I have this perfect outcome? That's a stopper in life that holds you up and not let you grow. And if you are looking to help someone else grow, that's a definite limiting factor. If someone's looking to take on some mentees or to help someone in their community grow, they want to go out, they're listening to this podcast and saying, Dr. Urshkori is amazing. How would I how but I want to do something, but I don't know where I get started. How would I go out and get started?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, I think the first thing you can do and the most immediate thing you can do is to just look into your network. I think so many times as we're focused on the end goal, we overlook those to the left and right of us that can support that goal, right? And it's not even intentional, but we just are fixated on again the outcome. So I think the more that you can look inward and look to your left and to your right and see, okay, there is somebody here that is supportive of my goal. There is somebody who has resources and has the best at heart for me and what it is that I hope to achieve. The more that you can lean into that, I think that is where the community is built. That's where what might have taken three years can get done in less than a year because you're teaming up with those that support you and you're ultimately leaning into those relationships and pouring into those relationships. So I would just urge anyone that's interested in mentoring to look into your network and then after that, look out into your community, right? There's problems all around us. It's not hard what needs to be fixed. So, what are we gonna do about it? We can sit down, twiddle our fingers, and wonder when a solution is coming, or we can look in the mirror and say we are the solution. It doesn't take much. There's nonprofit organizations all around. There's programs all around that could use your heart of service, could use your time, and it's all free. But you just have to show up, and there's power in showing up. So, first step would be to just look into your network, the second step would be to look into your community and go for it.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Awesome. Look at the mirror. Thank you so much for your time today, listeners. I hope you have enjoyed hearing Dr. Oshigori's journey and life. Please remember to go out, build bridges, make new connections today. Thank you so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Yeah, thank you for the invitation.