{"id":15878,"date":"2016-09-05T16:30:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T20:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=15878"},"modified":"2016-09-05T16:30:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T20:30:27","slug":"a-shore-thing-sarah-strickland-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/a-shore-thing-sarah-strickland-12\/","title":{"rendered":"A shore thing: Sarah Strickland \u201912"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n\"Sarah<\/a>Teamwork and adaptability\u00a0learned at Clemson served Sarah\u00a0Strickland well abroad and back home.\u00a0Critical skills such as communication and\u00a0resourcefulness have helped Strickland from\u00a0every job as a nurse in the ICU step-down unit,\u00a0to working on a ship in Madagascar, to now\u00a0working in an emergency room.
\nBut it was working abroad that brought all\u00a0the lessons from Clemson to the forefront.\u00a0Knowing she was wrapping up the first few\u00a0years of her career in Clemson, Lexington native\u00a0Sarah Strickland began looking for adventures\u00a0in nursing. She found one in Mercy Ships<\/a>, an\u00a0international faith-based organization with a\u00a0mission to increase health care throughout the\u00a0world. Since 1978, Mercy Ships has delivered\u00a0services to more than 2.54 million people.
\nFrom November 2015 to February 2016,\u00a0Strickland lived on Africa Mercy<\/em><\/a> which was\u00a0docked in Madagascar, and worked alongside\u00a0surgeons in facial tumor removal and cleft lip\u00a0and palate reconstruction. The ship, which began service in 2007, offers an 82-bed ward.
\nStrickland learned about the mission opportunity from one of her co-workers who lived in Africa for a while.\u00a0And after multiple short-term mission trips as a high school student,\u00a0Strickland wasn\u2019t afraid of tackling a challenge overseas. \u201cI prayed\u00a0about it for a few weeks and ended up applying at the end of the\u00a0summer,\u201d she said.
\nThe timing meant she wouldn\u2019t be on an early 2015 trip, but\u00a0would be considered for an early 2016 team. But life in South\u00a0Carolina didn\u2019t prep Strickland for everything.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019d never done much with pediatrics or facial patients,\u201d said\u00a0Strickland. \u201cAnd most conditions would have been treated long\u00a0before they got to the point we were seeing. I worked in the ICU\u00a0(Intensive Care Unit) and a step-down unit, but for the most part,\u00a0working in Madagascar was completely different from anything I had\u00a0ever done, which was the situation for most of my co-workers, so it\u00a0was a learning curve for everybody.\u201d
\nWhat Clemson and her training had prepped her for was being\u00a0adaptable.\u00a0\u201cClemson definitely teaches you how to think critically. When we were over there we didn\u2019t have access to as\u00a0many resources as we have over here. \u2026 We had to rely on a lot more of our judgment. Clemson just also really\u00a0encourages a teamwork approach to nursing. Over there I really experienced the need to rely on my co-workers\u00a0as teammates even more so than working here.\u201d
\nClemson tiger paw temporary tattoos, stickers and flags also helped Strickland bring one of her loves to her\u00a0patients.\u00a0\u201cThere was 14-year-old kid who had a tumor. The day he had it removed was the day of the National\u00a0Championship game. So I put [tiger paws] on a bunch of the kids, including him. The first time he got to look at\u00a0the back of his head without the tumor, he had a tiger paw on his cheek.\u201d
\n\u201cSeeing the look on his face when he got to see that just reminded me [Clemson] is what brought me here,\u00a0and it just all came together,\u201d she said.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Teamwork and adaptability\u00a0learned at Clemson served Sarah\u00a0Strickland well abroad and back home.\u00a0Critical skills such as communication and\u00a0resourcefulness have helped Strickland from\u00a0every job as a nurse in the ICU step-down unit,\u00a0to working on a ship in Madagascar, to now\u00a0working in an emergency room. But it was working abroad that brought all\u00a0the lessons from Clemson to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":15879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[171,1905,2116,2582,2851,2852,3212],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-alumni-profile","tag-medicine","tag-nursing","tag-service","tag-summer-fall-2016","tag-summer-fall-2016-alumni-profiles","tag-volunteer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/08\/Sarah-Strickland8.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}