In small towns, community is everything. Strangers in grocery stores and gas stations quickly become familiar faces, weaving a tight-knit fabric of connections. This sense of community is found in Andrews, South Carolina, a town with a population of less than 3,000, nestled on the edge of Georgetown County.

At the corner of Main Street and Highway 41 sits Andrews High School. Inside, hundreds of students fill the classrooms as they work toward graduation and the next phase of life.

It was in one of those classrooms that Christina Woolley began the journey to a health care career. But it wasn’t just what was offered within the school that showed Woolley the opportunities awaiting her after graduation. Instead, it was what she learned inside what’s now known as Tidelands Georgetown Memorial Hospital.

Woolley, now the practice manager for Tidelands Health Family Medicine at Andrews and Tidelands Health Family Medicine at Hemingway, first met clinical instructor Sandra Wilson in a health sciences class at the high school in 2003.

Wilson recalls those days vividly.

“I can still see her sitting in my class,” Wilson says.

Wilson, herself a graduate of Andrews High School, began teaching at her alma mater years after a clinical career that included a decade at the Georgetown hospital.

“Maybe I could make an impact on one of the students’ lives, on their future,” Wilson says.

At that time, the class was brand new to the curriculum, and Wilson, a seasoned registered nurse, knew how to make a lasting impact on her students.

Under her supervision, the students did two rotations at Tidelands Georgetown on 2 Parrish – the very wing where Wilson had worked years ago. In that rotation, students got hands-on experience while working alongside certified nursing assistants and registered nurses.

“This experience helped me get an idea of what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be when I grew up,” Woolley says. “We did everything from washing patients, shadowing nurses with wound care, anything we were authorized to do.”

Outside of clinical bedside duties, Woolley also saw how to use mobile X-rays, which shaped her career.

After graduation, Woolley enrolled at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, where she graduated with an associate’s degree as a certified radiologic technologist. Today, Woolley still uses her imaging background to perform X-rays at the Tidelands Health Family Medicine offices she manages.

“Ms. Sandra really broadened our eyes to different health care careers,” Woolley says. “She let us know it wasn’t just nursing. We could look at dialysis, surgery – she took us around to anywhere she could so we could experience what a career in health care could look like.”

For others, if clinical care wasn’t their calling, Wilson encouraged students to look at health care roles in areas such as administration, human resources and billing. 

“Many of my classmates ended up going into health care after this class,” Woolley says.

Today, through the McRoy and Jo Skipper Initiative for Learning and Teaching, Tidelands Health provides students and nursing graduates the chance to experience what a health care career can offer through nursing internships, job shadowing for students and the ability to gain practical hours through volunteering with almost any department.

“I had a lot of great students,” Wilson says. “Christina was excellent, and I’m proud to see her succeeding.”