{"id":9545,"date":"2021-09-22T14:05:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T14:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/09\/22\/courtney-clarke-17-finds-dual-calling-in-veterans-affairs-and-children-in-need\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:43:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:43:20","slug":"courtney-clarke-17-finds-dual-calling-in-veterans-affairs-and-children-in-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/courtney-clarke-17-finds-dual-calling-in-veterans-affairs-and-children-in-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Courtney Clarke \u201917 finds dual calling in veterans affairs and children in need"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Courtney Clarke ’17<\/p><\/div>\n

On the surface, her pharmacy career and volunteer work seem unconnected.<\/p>\n

But for Courtney Clarke \u201917, life is about seeing needs and stepping up. In both the veteran community and foster care services, she discovered \u201ca population of people that don\u2019t always get the respect and the care they deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

So she\u2019s investing herself to see that they do.<\/p>\n

Clarke, a Philadelphia native, has always been fascinated by pharmaceuticals: \u201cYou take this and then it\u2019s fixed,\u201d she said. When a pharmacist would give instructions about potential side effects, she couldn\u2019t stop wondering, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA little bit nerdy,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cBut that was always really interesting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While studying biology at Furman, she took a pharmacotherapy class. \u00a0She also worked as a pharmacy technician at a Greenville CVS, where she had her first encounter with the foster care system.<\/p>\n

A woman was trying to fill antibiotic prescriptions for three children with different last names. Another tech was having trouble placing the orders, and Clarke stepped in to help. She found out the woman had just had all three children brought to her for emergency placement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very humbling moment for me,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what somebody else is dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

She decided that someday she\u2019d be part of helping children in crisis.<\/p>\n

After Furman, Clarke went to East Tennessee State University\u2019s Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. The school is on the Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so exceptionally prepared,\u201d Clarke said. During her years at Furman, \u201cyou had people there to support you, but they weren\u2019t micromanaging you or spoon-feeding you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Clarke hadn\u2019t forgotten the woman at CVS. During her third year of pharmacy school, she began to volunteer as a child advocate with CASA of Northeast Tennessee, serving children who had been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect.<\/p>\n

The following year she found her work focus: ETSU pharmacy students do their fourth-year rotations in the VA. Clarke quickly saw how a specific population can have clusters of issues \u2013 mental health problems, for example, or pain management struggles. But she also saw the power of working within a self-contained system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you need to call their doctor, they might be right upstairs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Clarke was overwhelmed by the patients themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the stories that I have heard from people \u2013 you can\u2019t even imagine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In her four years at ETSU, Clarke earned both a PharmD and an MBA. At graduation, she was surprised with the school\u2019s Gary Mabrey Community Service Award recognizing her work with CASA.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Clarke with Gary Mabrey, who presented her with the ETSU’s Gary Mabrey Community Service Award.<\/p><\/div>\n

When it was time to look for residency programs, Clarke knew she wanted to stay within the VA. In June, she began a one-year residency at the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System in Nashville. She\u2019s already reached out to the Nashville office of CASA. And she\u2019s hoping to commit to a second year of residency this fall.<\/p>\n

Tennessee licensing laws allow a pharmacist to practice clinically almost like a nurse practitioner. For example, a physician may diagnose diabetes and then the patient may follow up with a pharmacist, who will monitor response to therapies and make needed adjustments.<\/p>\n

The VA is \u201creally good about using us to our full potential and letting us practice at the top of our license,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even more than that, she\u2019s part of something bigger than herself. \u201cIt\u2019s a community,\u201d Clarke said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the surface, her pharmacy career and volunteer work seem unconnected. But for Courtney Clarke \u201917, life is about seeing needs and stepping up. In both the veteran community and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,60,19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni-profiles","category-biology","category-top-four-news-1st-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}