By training, I am a scientist-practitioner in the fields of both nursing and clinical psychology. I have used an integrative approach to both research and clinical practice---with each critically shaping the other. I have spent all of my professional life in human services, and have been deeply devoted to the honor and calling of caring for the vulnerable. My academic grounding in evidence-based practice, research and critical thinking, and the biopsychosocial-spiritual model of care has served me well throughout my long career in healthcare. After my NDE, however, it was clear to me that the life-changing, spiritual transformation I was experiencing dramatically highlighted how very limited my traditional academic and clinical training was in helping my clients---and myself---to navigate the powerful healing elements of the spiritual universe, largely "unseen" through the scientific lens.  

For so many years before my own NDE, I lacked the tools to validate the spiritually transformative and near-death experiences shared with me by my patients and clients---as well as some I experienced myself---which left me feeling professionally inadequate, and my patients feeling alone, confused, and misunderstood.  I knew I was not alone, as many clinicians--- particularly in Western Medicine---feel the same frustration and lack the skill set that could help to provide the caring interventions our patients so desperately need.  Doctors and nurses are often the first point of contact for those who have had NDEs, but patients often lack the ability to clearly describe their experiences, as they try to share them with clinicians who lack the ability to understand them. Despite the mounting NDE literature, and pioneering work of Drs. Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, Bruce Greyson, and many others, education about NDEs and other spiritually transformative experiences is not yet included in mainstream education for the very practitioners often closest to those having such experiences. After my NDE, much of what I thought I understood about life, death, and everything in between was seen through a very different lens.  My vision of my professional work changed forever. I knew that in order to understand my own experience and use it as a healing tool to help others, I would need new credentials. My NDE gifted me with those credentials in ways I could only have imagined, and it is now my mission to help other healthcare professionals to benefit from those gifts by integrating the powerful messages they bring into patient care.