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After a year-long vacancy, Tavistock Community Health Inc., once again has a full-time nurse practitioner.
Sarah McDevitt, RN(EC) BSc, BScN PHCNP joined the doctors and staff at the Tavistock clinic on November 14,2005. She wills a much-needed position within the practice which helps to free the doctors from less critical health care concerns and focuses on health assessment diagnosis, treatment and management of illnesses and injuries. A large part of her work also focuses on health promotion and disease prevention.
Sarah (Sheldon) is a native of Woodstock and already has a wealth of experience in the health care field. She graduated from woodstock Collegiate Institute and attended McMaster University in Hamilton where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. She continued her education, earning a Bachelor of Science Nursing degree in 1996. She spent three years working in a cardiac care uniit in a Florida Hospital before enrolling in the Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Western Ontario in London where she graduated in 2002.
During that time, Sarah worked for six weeks in the Emergency Room at the Woodstock /General Hospital. She also worked with Dr. Mark Diattolevi of Mitchell who later recommended the Tavistock clinic. Upong raduation, she had worked in Wingham for three years as a Nurse Practitioner.
Her husband, Brent, is an occupational therapist who works in London and they have two children, Liam, 6, and Rowan, 4. The family wanted to move closer to the Woodstock-London area and will be looking for a home in the area. The clinic setting in Tavistock was just what she was looking for. “I was impressed that people got together to fund this place,” she commented. Of note, her sister-in-law in a doctor at Stratford General Hospital.
For the past two weeks, Sarah has been shadowing the doctors and building relationships with patients on the Tavistock roster. This week she will begin working on her own with morning calls for health care and prevention.
People are “so welcoming and open,” she said, “I feel like I just fit --- I belong here!”