Relationships are key

The influences Dominique Deveaux had during her childhood in the Bahamas combined with the experiences she has had at Harding helped her realize her innate relational nature, which she plans to use in her career as a pharmacist.

Deveaux is a pharmacy student from Freeport, Grand Bahama. She completed her undergraduate degree in 2015 and immediately began pharmacy school. She is now in her final year of pharmacy school doing clinical rotations throughout central Arkansas. Through her rotations, Deveaux learned that she prefers the interpersonal aspects of pharmacy — connecting and building relationships with patients — rather than working solely in coordination with doctors and nurses.

“I have the option to build a good working relationship with the people that I will see Monday through Friday or whatever the shift is … and with the people who will be coming in on a regular basis,” Deveaux said. “I want to watch somebody walk in and know who they are, know what they are taking medication for, but also have that relationship to say, ‘Well how is this going? How are you doing? Have you been feeling well?’”

Although an introvert, she strongly believes this innate desire comes from within her personality and childhood during which she was raised in a relational family and culture. In addition to that, she said her time at Harding helped her recognize her need and desire to live like this.

“I’ve developed a lot of friendships here at Harding that I don’t think I would’ve developed anywhere else. And that has really helped me as well. My church family here is very relational like that, too. It’s like all these little things. It’s really put me in a position to meet people.”

Deveaux graduated from high school in the Bahamas in 2010 and attended a government-owned college for two years where she changed her major twice. During the summer, she also worked at the pharmaceutical manufacturing company where her father was a lab analyst. Being exposed to the company put pharmacy on her radar as a way to be involved in the medical field in a different way. Once she decided to go to school abroad, she began searching specifically for Christian universities, choosing Harding in part for its easy transition from preprofessional study to pharmacy school.

Once she arrived, Deveaux flourished in the Christian environment. She grew up in the church but was searching to connect with a group of people her own age with similar values. While she found that like-mindedness in many of her classmates, Deveaux also learned she will always work beside people who are different than her.

“When you grow up someplace where a lot of people are like you, they think like you, even if it’s just in a simple way,” Deveaux said. “The way you communicate and the expectations you have are not going to be met when you go into an environment with people that have different backgrounds from you. My patients are going to be from every corner of wherever I am. They’re going to be different from me, but that does not mean I will treat them any differently than I would treat myself.”

Being able to adjust to the culture and environment away from home during her undergraduate degree also made adapting to graduate school a smoother transition for Deveaux.

“One thing I will say in being at a Christian university is that sometimes there’s this false expectation that being a Christian university means everyone’s going to be perfect,” Deveaux said. “That is something that I learned in undergrad, but my classmates have had to learn, especially coming from outside universities. … We are Christians, yes, but we also are human beings; we have flaws.”

— Hannah Owens, staff writer