Get to know: Angela Villatoro and Gurpreet Jawanda

CSUB graduate nursing program students share their real world and classroom experience

By California State University, Bakersfield

October 30^th, 2020

As COVID-19 continues to impact all of our lives, many students in the graduate nursing program at California State University, Bakersfield’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering have had to juggle schoolwork and their jobs inside local hospitals treating patients during a global health crisis.

Balancing school and work isn’t easy in the best of times, but for students and working nurses like Gurpreet Jawanda and Angela Villatoro, the weight of each responsibility is even heavier than usual now.

Once they make it through this, they will know they can handle anything when they finally become family nurse practitioners. As program director Dr. Heidi He often says, nurse practitioners have the brains of a doctor and the heart of a nurse. Helping patients through a novel virus without a cure is sure to help them strengthen both of those areas.

Jawanda and Villatoro both took the time to answer a few questions about their experience being working nurses and graduate students amid a pandemic.

Name: Gurpreet Jawanda

Age: 50 years

Current year in school: Second year MSN-FNP

Number of years as a nurse or other medical field job: 10 years

Where are you working during COVID and what has it been like?

I have been working as an ICU registered nurse since my graduation from nursing school in 2015. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic landed in our part of the country, I have been routinely taking turns working in the COVID ICU unit like other ICU RNs at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital. It is a stressful time taking care of patients who are suffering from a disease that has no proven treatments. Families are not allowed to visit the patients. Many COVID-19 patients have died with only nurses at the bedside. That for me has been the hardest thing to deal with. Nurses try to keep families informed as much as we possibly can, but our patients are very sick and unstable.

How are you managing life as a working nurse and a student?

I work full time as an ICU RN, and the course load in this program is heavy. I am thankful for having a wife and children who understand the immense stress this pandemic has added to my work and educational experience. Added to this, I avoid meeting friends and extended family to maintain social distancing. I always wear a mask, but it bothers me to see so much vitriol in the society right now. I am not leaning either way politically, but when did it become a political ideology to not protect oneself and others against an airborne pandemic?

What are your classes like right now?

I have online classes on Wednesdays from 5 to 10 p.m. My highest regards to the faculty who have adapted remarkably to provide us with a seamless transition to online learning with technology such as Zoom and BlackBoard. I am especially thankful to Clinica Sierra Vista for allowing CSUB students to continue their clinical rotations. CSV has been an amazing partner in my education experience where I have learned so much, thanks to their kind preceptors such as Ruth Ogot, DNP and Dr. Sunday Irene.

What keeps you motivated as you’re working on the front lines during a pandemic?

This country is in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis. How did a country that prides itself in having the latest medical know-how end up in this mess? That is for this country to reflect upon and do some serious soul-searching. By now more than 200,000 Americans have died. I believe that health care workers by virtue of teamwork between physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and other ancillary staff can help alleviate all the suffering that is going on. This is my chosen profession; it affords me and other nurses the ability and an opportunity to make a difference in this very tough time in this nation’s history.

What is something you wish people knew or understood about being a nurse right now?

Nursing has been among the most respected professions in America for the last 17 years. Being a nurse means that we are trusted by the public to take care of their sick loved ones to the best of our capability. Nurses are patient advocates, a role that we all take very seriously. I wish all people understood that we continue to do that even when the current CDC guidelines have restricted visitation in the hospital.

What have you learned about yourself or your chosen profession during this time?

WHO had declared 2020 the “Year of the Nurse” in honor of Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday. It was completely unexpected that a global pandemic such as COVID-19 would hit with such brutality. Nurses have heeded the call to action by working tirelessly shift after shift in a situation that none of us have experienced. There is heartbreak and sadness in the COVID unit, nurses cry and sob as patients die and family members watch their loved ones breathe their last by FaceTime or Zoom. But nurses are resilient, they wipe their tears and get back to work. Nurses are strong, resilient and compassionate. Nursing’s presence and role in healthcare is a cause for celebration, both during this current pandemic and Year of the Nurse, and beyond!

Name: Angela Villatoro

Age: 42

Current year in school: Second year MSN-FNP

Number of years as a nurse or other medical field job: 8.5 years

Where are you working during COVID?

Bakersfield Memorial Hospital in the Emergency Department

How are you managing life as a working nurse and a student?

Managing a full-time job as a nurse and a second full-time job as a student has been tough and stressful for me. I have taken vacation days in order to focus more on school. The program is rigorous, but I remain extremely focused. While I do not have a social life, I do have the support of my two older sons – ages 20 and 23 – and my parents. This semester, however, I made the decision to stop working, and I just turned in my two weeks’ notice so that I can dedicate more of my time to school, especially the clinical aspect of it. Currently, I am performing my clinicals at Clinica Sierra Vista. The director of the program has recommended that we do more than the required clinical hours to develop more experience in caring for patients. I am currently being precepted by Dr. Omar Salamanca who has expressed that he is willing to precept me more if I am willing to participate in doing more hours, so I decided to take his recommendation. Putting in my two-week notice was not an easy decision. I contemplated this decision all summer and now that I have made it, I know I made the right choice. It is a sacrifice that I am making, and I know that I will be limited in my finances and I am also going to miss working in the ER, but I leave for a better cause, and I am keeping my eyes on the prize – to become a competent and compassionate Family Nurse Practitioner. My plan is to someday return to Bakersfield Memorial Hospital’s ER and work as an FNP.

What are your classes like right now?

Right now, I am taking three courses: NURS 6341 Advanced Practice: Care of Individuals and Families Across the Lifespan III (Clinical), NURS 6340 Advanced Practice Nursing: Care for Individuals and Families Across the Lifespan III (Theory), and NURS 5250: Transformational Leadership and APRN Role Development. I am currently doing my clinicals at CSV located in Arvin under the supervision of Dr. Salamanca.

What keeps you motivated as you are working on the front lines during a pandemic?

What has kept me motivated is the love I have for my job, my country, and for this world. I feel that we all need to come together to restore a balance and resume living our lives with our loved ones.

What is something you wish people knew or understood about being a nurse right now?

That we love what we do and that we do it unconditionally, and we truly appreciate their support. Most importantly, I want to remind the public that nurses are not the only heroes. All the ancillary staff that come together to provide patient care are also heroes. In March, Sephora Beverly Hills in Los Angeles provided 100 care packages to our ER. I was privileged to be entrusted to disperse the care packets in the ER. To be fair, I chose a random day to go to the ER to distribute the care packets to the day shift employees and night shift employees. This included everyone who was present during that shift: doctors, nurses, ER techs, phlebotomist, respiratory therapist, housekeepers, and registration. Why did I do this? I did this because I feel we are all in it for the same cause and when we join forces and put love before hate, we can overcome anything, including this epidemic.

What have you learned about yourself or your chosen profession during this time?

I have learned that I have a strong support system, which is my family and my best friends, and for that I am a winner. As a child and early in my 20s I had no confidence in myself. I learned that people need to work hard to achieve what they want and that comes with making sacrifices. If someone would have said to me when I was in my 20s that I would be in a masters’ program as an FNP, I would have said, “No way, I know nothing about medicine and could never learn medicine!” That is how little confidence I had in myself. But now I know that I love medicine, and that anything is possible if you really work hard for it.