O’Shanick has completed his MD at age 23 from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Postdoctoral Studies from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina in 1981. For 10 years, he taught in academic institutions and in 1991 founded the Center for Neurorehabilitation Services with his wife, Alison, a speech-language pathologist, in Richmond, Virginia. He has published 3 books, over 60 peer-reviewed articles and 15 chapters in textbooks focusing on traumatic brain injury. He is Board Certified in General Psychiatry, Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry, and Brain Injury Medicine where he sits on the Administrative oversight committee for that subspecialty. He is the National Medical Director Emeritus of the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) after serving as the Inaugural Medical Director of that organization for 14 years. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has received both the Berrol Award for Clinical Excellence from BIAA and the Weinstock Award for Public Service from BIAV.