Spartan Spotlight: Georgina Ravan - From Upstate Tennis to Upstate Health Services
5/14/2020 3:50:00 PM | Women's Tennis, General
Editor's Note: This is the third installment in a four-part feature series as USC Upstate Athletics, in partnership with the USC Upstate Mary Black School of Nursing, recognizes former student-athletes in the nursing profession in conjunction with International Nurses Day, Tuesday, May 12. The features include: Francis Gyau '16 '18 (men's soccer), Samantha (Seelinger) DeMartino '15 (women's soccer), Mia Raiff '20 (women's soccer).
SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Helping others in need has always been one of Georgina Ravan's greatest satisfactions in life. Ravan is a former member of the USC Upstate women's tennis team, and during her time as an undergraduate student-athlete, she had the opportunity to complete an internship at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. That's when she decided to turn helping others into a career and become a nurse.
"During my internship, I rotated through various departments and met the most wonderful, hardworking, caring nurses who convinced me that nursing is what I wanted to do," said Ravan, MS, APRN, FNP.
Ravan moved to the United States from Argentina when she was 16 years old, and has been in Spartanburg ever since beginning college in 1995. "Georgina was a great student! She was fun to be around, enthusiastic, inquisitive, caring, and had a high desire to learn and deliver high quality care," said Dr. Angie Davis, retired Associate Professor of Nursing and current adjunct professor.
As a registered nurse for 19 years and a nurse practitioner for the past eight years, most of Ravan's career has been spent in acute care. She has also worked in the emergency room as well as a hospitalist. In April 2019, after working at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center for around 16 years, Ravan came back to USC Upstate to join the Health Services team.
With the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, the USC Upstate Health Services clinic on campus has been closed since March 16. However, the staff has been working from home using modified telemedicine, which is the practice of caring for patients remotely through phone calls when the provider and patient are not physically present with each other. "I have also been working together with the other providers in keeping up with the most recent research and guidelines for our staff and students," said Ravan.
As a student-athlete at Upstate, once fall practice started her freshman year, Ravan says she immediately began to feel overwhelmed. She quickly learned how to prioritize tasks along with time management skills that later helped her as she juggled work, school, and being a mother. "Thanks to my upperclassmen teammates and coaches, I survived my first semester which not only helped me academically through college, but also later in life when I started working as a nurse, enrolled in my master's program, and became a mom," Ravan said.
Additionally, Ravan thinks being a student-athlete at Upstate also helped prepare her for her current position with the university's health services because she can relate to a lot of the current student-athletes she helps care for. "I feel that even though times have changed, a lot of the student-athletes have the same concerns and challenges that I had," she said. "I think that makes me more understandable and hopefully more prepared to help them." Ravan also feels that because she attended Upstate, she is better equipped to assist with campus preparedness efforts in the midst of today's COVID-19 challenges.
Her favorite memories of being a student-athlete at Upstate include road trips with her team and getting together with all of the other schools at the annual conference tournaments.
Ravan mentions that as the COVID-19 crisis continues to linger and we see how essential nurses are to healthcare, future nurses are seeing the major challenges of the job. However, she believes those aspiring nurses are also seeing the rewards of the job as well. "No matter how bad a shift may be, there is always another day that will be better," she said. "Having compassion and caring for patients is the most rewarding job in the world."
