Will Ratliff RN,LP is an Ex. Flight Medic/Nurse and one of the original founders of Transcend. He is a subject matter expert in all things Ketamine and functions as the clinic's Director of Operations.
Will designed the current clinics, helped develop the protocols and procedures, developed and improved the processes and systems, and has personally trained all the new staff members to operate to his and Dr. Cunningham's standard.
Will was a total Ketamine nerd prior to founding Transcend due to his experience administering the medication to patients in ambulances, emergency rooms, helicopters, in wrecked vehicles and on roadsides. At Transcend, Will has facilitated approximately 3,100+ Ketamine infusions working alongside our KAP therapists. That's a lot of time spent watching the real-time effects of Ketamine administration and dosing, in a multitude of settings, situations, indications and patient populations.
Will has been instrumental in Transcend becoming the renowned IV KAP clinic it has become over the years, being a vocal proponent that titrated IV Ketamine administration is critical for intra-infusion psychotherapy, and that intra-infusion psychotherapy is critical for significant efficacy in KAP, particularly for those with trauma.
Will is a believer that the function of administering Ketamine in treating mental health conditions is not for its chemical effects, but for its ability to accelerate the psychotherapy process and that most KAP providers have never fully ever seen this ability of Ketamine to do this, because they are not able to control the level of Ketamine well enough to see this effect. Most KAP is done by IM, or oral administration, and if done by IV it is usually a stead state infusion or gravity drip. These methods of Ketamine administration nearly always ensure that a patient is not at the correct level for psychotherapy unless achieved by total happenstance.
In the early days of Transcend's inception, Will recognized that if a therapist is trying to do therapy with a client under the effects of Ketamine, it is incredibly easy to dose the Ketamine too low or too high and ruin the process. Also, a patient's ketamine sensitivity is different every time they come in, and often changes constantly as the session transpires. So unless you are adjusting the level of the Ketamine in real-time, you are likely hindering the therapy more than your helping it. Will brought these findings to Dr. Cunningham and together they developed protocols for Ketamine administration specifically designed to help facilitate psychotherapy, not just be a wild ride or somewhat loosening. The way Transcend doses Ketamine is hands down the most advanced in the KAP industry and it is a direct consequence of what happens when two medical providers with as interesting backgrounds as Will Ratliff RN, LP and Dr. Cord Cunningham have work on a problem nobody has given any focus too.
Will still puts on his worn in pair of Transcend scrubs and helps facilitate KAP sessions, mostly focusing on medically complex cases, adolescents and elderly but he spends most of his time these days ensuring the ship is sailing in the right direction and training the next generation of Transcenders.
What makes Will most happy is sharing insights that he has learned from doing this work to our newer KAP clinicians, knowing that in sharing this knowledge, it can ripple out, save lives and have positive impacts far greater than what his own two hands could ever produce.
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