When he played football at Vanderbilt, Tristan Strong, BS’12, MSN’18, learned that success demands discipline, preparation and the ability to keep moving forward when things don’t go as planned. Years later, those same lessons shape the way he defines success in the lives of the patients he serves.
“As a nurse, being able to monitor a patient’s improvement over time and ensure that they are receiving quality care and making positive steps toward recovery is the win,” Strong says.
Strong works primarily in recovery medicine, caring for patients struggling with addiction while continuing to practice primary and acute care. Recovery, he explains, is rarely a straight path. Patients may make significant progress, relapse and then return ready to try again. For Strong, the measure of success is whether a patient is moving forward.
That perspective reflects one of the most important lessons from his time at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN): caring for patients means seeing the whole person, not just what brings them into the clinic.
Vanderbilt prepared Strong for the breadth of challenges he would encounter in healthcare. His career has taken him from testosterone therapy to primary care, entrepreneurship and now recovery medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he opened his own primary care clinic and found himself doing nearly every job necessary to keep it running—from checking patients in and drawing blood to placing orders and managing operations. That experience tested the discipline and time-management skills he had developed as a Vanderbilt student-athlete. At VUSN, he learned not only clinical knowledge but also how to assess patient needs, adapt, and care for each patient as an individual. That last lesson is at the core of his work every day.
“Every patient is different,” he says. “You can’t treat patients the same.”
Strong sees nurses as the face of health care—the professionals who spend the most time with patients, recognize changes in their condition, advocate for their needs and connect them with the rest of the care team. Doing that well requires compassion, empathy and attention to detail. He credits VUSN’s faculty with helping him develop that perspective.
“They were good coaches throughout the program,” Strong remembers. “Their big thing was always trust the process.”
Now, Strong hopes others will invest in giving future nurses that same preparation. Philanthropy, he says, helps Vanderbilt continue evolving alongside an ever-changing healthcare system and gives students the resources they need to compete at the highest level.
He has seen that impact before. As a football player, he watched Vanderbilt’s indoor practice facility take shape while he was a student. Today, he sees improvements to the School of Nursing through the same lens: investments made today create opportunities students will benefit from for years to come.
For Strong, the greatest return on investment is not measured in rankings, buildings, or even careers. It is measured in patients who heal, families who regain hope and people who take another step towards recovery.
That is a different kind of win—and one Strong is proud to pursue.