Who we are, and who pays us

Dr. Matthew Harmon is a co-founder of Fifth Party Consulting. Licensed in Kentucky as an advanced practice registered nurse (CRNA) and certified by the NBCRNA, he has practiced anesthesia since 2017 at The Medical Center at Bowling Green, providing care across general, vascular, neurosurgical, cardiac, obstetric, ENT and trauma surgery. His clinical career spans independent, medically directed and medically supervised practice models, giving him direct experience of how each care-team structure staffs rooms, covers call and performs day to day.

Dr. Harmon is the founder and chief executive officer of Synesthesia LLC, a healthcare education technology and consulting company. He leads its product strategy, clinical content standards and business operations, directs the executive team, and oversees the company’s engineering, content and consulting work. He also founded SynesthesiaEDU, the company’s consulting practice, where he advises nurse anesthesia programs on accreditation readiness and recruits and directs the content-expert consultants who deliver each engagement.

In academic administration, Dr. Harmon has served as assistant program director at Baptist Health/Murray State University, the University of Evansville and Western Kentucky University. At Western Kentucky University he is helping build the university’s inaugural nurse anesthesia program, including its curriculum, accreditation materials and clinical partnerships. He has contributed to multiple accreditation self-studies, designed and built simulation programs, and received the Clinical Instructor of the Year award in 2021.

Dr. Harmon holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice and an MBA in healthcare administration from Murray State University. His MBA capstone analyzed the cost-effectiveness of collaborative anesthesia care-team models. His research on nurse anesthesia education has been published in the Journal of Nurse Anesthesia Education.

• Doctor of Nursing Practice, Murray State University
• MBA, healthcare administration, Murray State University
• BSN, University of Kentucky

Dr. Zachary Stewart is a co-founder of Fifth Party Consulting. Licensed in Kentucky as an advanced practice registered nurse (CRNA) and certified by the NBCRNA, he has practiced anesthesia at The Medical Center at Bowling Green since 2018, providing general, monitored and obstetric anesthesia across general surgery, neurosurgery, vascular, ENT, endoscopy and brachytherapy. He is a member of the hospital’s acute pain service, which performs approximately 3,000 peripheral nerve blocks annually.

Dr. Stewart coordinates the clinical rotations of resident nurse anesthetists at the Medical Center and precepts both residents and newly hired CRNAs. Before entering anesthesia practice, he was a critical care nurse in the neurology and neurosurgery intensive care unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and an emergency nurse, where he developed cardiac-arrest checklists and trained staff in ultrasound-guided vascular access.

As chief operating officer of Synesthesia LLC, Dr. Stewart leads day-to-day business operations, setting priorities, workflows and client support across the organization. He directs development of the company’s educational software, translating program needs and accreditation standards into product requirements, workflows and quality controls. As lead consultant for SynesthesiaEDU, he manages accreditation consulting engagements, recruits and coordinates consultants, and oversees timelines and deliverables.

Dr. Stewart holds a Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice and a Master of Science in nurse anesthesia from Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Western Kentucky University. His doctoral work examined factors influencing clinical evaluation return rates for resident nurse anesthetists.

• Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice, Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia
• MS, nurse anesthesia, Middle Tennessee School of Anesthesia
• BSN, Western Kentucky University