Alumni Success Story: Sara Stevelinck, BSN ’17

First Lieutenant Clinical Emergency Room Nurse for the United States Air Force

What is the most fulfilling thing about your position and/or the company you work for?

We can be called overseas at any point in time. We need to be ready to serve our airmen here as well as around the world. Being an emergency room nurse they can deploy me at any time. My dream is to work in emergency care on an airplane where I would travel to an airman, maybe touching down in an active zone or helping them return home from overseas. The possibility of helping other nations and countries is an opportunity I would not have had if I wasn’t in the military.

Have there been some innovative projects or initiatives you’ve been a part of in your job?

During the beginning of the pandemic, some of our ambulances were made mobile for the surrounding community and we had a tent where people who thought they might have COVID could come and get tested instead of going to an emergency room exposing themselves. These initiatives helped to keep COVID numbers down in our area.

What prepared you most for this job or to move up in your company?

It was a combination of my Davenport clinical experiences and my first job in the Level One Trauma Center and the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Spectrum. Davenport offers so many opportunities for clinical locations. I had rotations in the operating room, labor and delivery, pediatrics, and the general adult medical surgery population. That experience gave me a little more confidence and a better idea of what I wanted to go into after I graduated. Transitioning into Spectrum and caring for some of their sicker patients set me up well for treating whoever the patient is in front of me now.

What piece of advice would you give a new graduate who is entering the workforce today?

Explore every avenue. Especially for nursing students, the more exposure you have to clinicals, internships, or even working in a hospital while in school gives you that extra patient contact that helps to build your confidence when you’re out in the workforce. I never thought two years out of college I would be in another state practicing nursing in the military, but my experience both while in school and afterward gave me leverage when I applied to the Air Force.