BURDASH: As a physician in the Guard, we have multiple responsibilities. First and foremost is to be a soldier. When I say be a soldier, it’s to know how to defend yourself, defend your patients, defend your peers. There’s the education of soldiers. Working in a medical unit, I have people who signed up to be combat medics, and they might have done it to pay for school, they might have done it to prepare themselves because they’re going to go into PA school, or nursing, or dentistry, and we have lab techs, we have all kinds of folks who are going into the medical field.  And maybe they’re using this as their opportunity to educate themselves. As a provider who got all of that civilian experience, trained at, you know, well known programs, I get to use that experience to help those young folks, and that’s the same thing that happened for me, I had an ER doc train me when I was a medic. So, I feel to pass that along is really helpful, and I think a good responsibility to try to further and mentor the next generation of medical providers. ​