Joseph Sullivan Center

1. Fall 2016

3. Mission: The Joseph F. Sullivan Center will drive community health research initiatives providing
innovative, real-life student learning.
Goals:
• To promote positive human development, skill building and creative leadership through
partnerships to strive for overall community wellness.

4. LOCATIONS I WORKED:
 Joseph F Sullivan Center:
 The Sullivan Center is located in Edwards Hall on Clemson’s campus and has a lab
within it. It operates with four exam rooms, has room for acupuncture and for first line
therapy sessions.
 Clemson Free Clinic: Clemson, SC
 On Wednesdays the Sullivan Center runs out of the Clemson Free Clinic building from 8
am-1:30pm. The patients here are mostly Clemson City employees and migrant workers.
 Walhalla Clinic: Walhalla, SC
 This clinic operates out of the old DHEC building in Walhalla on Fridays along with the
prenatal clinic. The patients here are typically Hispanic patients.
 Mobile clinic: Oconee Memorial Hospital
 The mobile clinic operated outside Oconee Memorial Hospital working with patients as
part of Best Chance Network and Access Health.

5. DESCRIPTION OF
INTERNSHIP
 In this internship I was able to gain clinical experience and work with both
preventive and diagnostic health education
 Apply what I had learned in classes to real life situations, such as taking blood
pressure, developing concepts that I had learned inside of the classroom, and
working to create projects that would further my development of skills
 I worked a little over 215 hours at this internship
 Establish connections and work with different mentors and teaching styles to
absorb as much knowledge as possible

6. PEOPLE I WORKED WITH
 Preceptor: Caitlin Moore
 Nurse Practitioners: Michelle Deem, Megan Cherrish, Will Mayo
 Graduate Assistants: Gaby Bramblett and Ngoze Eke
 Clinical Assistant: Elizabeth Garcia

7. BEST CHANCE NETWORK
 This program offers women the opportunity to receive breast and cervical cancer
screenings that may not have otherwise been able to receive these treatments due
to a lack of income.
 For these I collected complete patient histories as well as asked questions that
pertained to their level of physical activity, eating habits, and overall lifestyle
habits.
 I also collected urine analysis and hemoglobin tests, took blood pressure, height,
weight, waist circumference, and hip circumference.

8. ACCESS HEALTH
 Mountain Lakes AccessHealth Patients are patients who do not have insurance
and typically have not been treated by physicians in quite some time.
 With these patients, I was responsible for making sure that I had a complete
medical history on them, as well as their records from any hospital visits they may
have had and the bloodwork associated with these.
 I made sure to call either Oconee Memorial Hospital or AccessHealth to get records when
they were not present
 I filled out the appropriate forms for their bloodwork to be processed correctly, and
made sure everything was labeled properly
 I made sure to have the complete reason for visit for all of these patients to allow
them to receive the best care possible, since most of them lacked any care.

9. DAILY DUTIES
 Taking vital signs including
 Height, weight, waist circumferences, temperature, last menstrual period (when
appropriate), blood pressure, pulse rate, and pulse ox (when appropriate)
 Get a complete patient history
 Use flow sheets to track patient’s progressions
 Run in-house labs such as:
 Urine analysis
 Glucose
 Hemoglobin
 Pregnancy tests
 Cleaning and restocking rooms
 Maintaining supplies at all offsite clinics.

10. SKILLS LEARNED IN
THIS INTERNSHIP
 Became very familiar with the use of EMR Allscripts.
 Learned how to adapt to different atmosphere’s in the different sites
 Worked with patients who did not speak the same language, and therefore had to
learn how to communicate with patients who may not have understood.
 Adapted to different learning styles of the different nurse practitioners.
 Became able to recognize when different tests were necessary and what needed to
be prepared in order to help ease the NP’s interaction with the patients.
 Absorbed information about different diagnoses and saw how the treatment of
these patients worked.

11. PROJECTS
Created Excel sheet for glucometer readings of diabetic
patients to keep track of for several months.
Reorganized Excel lists to make them alphabetical and
easier for both patients and the nurse practitioners to find
and use.

12. PROJECTS
Created a competency exam comprised of five patient
scenarios for future interns to work through and develop
skills in AllScripts.
 Worked out different scenarios and walked through them step by
step
 Created charts within AllScripts to match these scenarios.
 These charts will serve as the answer key for the future interns and their
trainings.

13. USEFUL SKILLS
I learned proper technique to prick someone’s finger and to
get an accurate sample for both glucose and hemoglobin
machines.
With these I became certified in using both the hemoglobin
and glucose machines and adapted techniques to make
these easier for both the patient and myself.

14. USEFUL SKILLS
 Used a urinalysis machine as well as learned to read urine sample strips by hand.
 Adapted to when technology was either not available or was not working, by
 taking complete patient histories by hand,
 measuring waist circumferences with a piece of tape and comparing when a tape
measure was unavailable
 Using manual blood pressure cuffs instead of the machine.
 Using the triple beam balance scale instead of an electronic scale.

15. CONCLUSION
 This internship has helped me solidify my goals of wanting to be a Physician’s
Assistant.
 I was able to see that I would like to work with underserved populations in the
future.
 I enjoyed the family practice aspect of this internship, because it allowed me to
create relationships with the patients that I saw throughout my time. They
seemed to feel confident in telling me their problems and allowing me to create a
connection with them.