Dr. Andrea Austin

Dr. Andrea Austin is a leading emergency physician, simulation director, and advocate for
physician well-being. Her book, “Revitalized: A Guidebook To Following Your Healing Heartline,” transcends her personal burnout narrative, offering physicians insights into navigating the healthcare system, emphasizing the need for emotional intelligence
and innovation as essential to thriving in healthcare.

Dr. Austin is the Senior Lecturer and Director of the Healthcare Modeling and Simulation Certificate from the Modeling Virtual Environments and Simulation (MOVES) Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. She is an Assistant Professor, Military & Emergency Medicine, Uniformed Services University. In addition, she is the Simulation Director for Southwest Healthcare, overseeing all simulation activity for nine residency and fellowship programs for Southwest Medical Education Consortium.

Firmly believing in the power of a well-being- oriented workforce to deliver superior care, Dr. Austin’s work focuses on autonomy, belonging, and competency for healthcare providers. Her pioneering efforts advocate for simulation as a pivotal tool in healthcare education.

Dr. Austin graduated from medical school at the University of Iowa and completed an emergency medicine residency at Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD). In 2016, she deployed to Iraq as part of a Shock Trauma Platoon. She returned to NMCSD and was the Emergency Medicine residency program’s Assistant Program Director and Simulation Director.

Her active-duty Navy career culminated in being the first woman emergency medicine physician stationed at the Navy Trauma Training Center (NTTC) at LA County + USC, one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States. As the emergency medicine physician and simulation director at NTTC, she trained hundreds of military medical personnel in the latest trauma advances to prepare them to provide medical care in austere environments.

Dr. Austin is the past president of the Government Services Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the current chair-elect of the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians. She hosts the podcast Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare, which features the inspirational stories of healthcare changemakers. She has published 17 peer-reviewed journal articles and co-authored six book chapters.

She is an MHPE candidate and anticipates graduating in the spring of 2025. Her thesis is entitled, “Creating Changemakers to Revitalize Medicine.” Through a series of qualitative interviews with identified changemakers, this study aims to describe the individual and organizational factors that inspire and support changemakers as a first step towards developing a longitudinal curriculum to increase the number and accelerate the progression of physician changemakers in medicine.

You can find her on Threads and other social media platforms below.