USD Magazine Summer 2015

Taking Care

he nurse is answering a woman’s question, but she makes sure to look at the boy standing next to her and talk to him as well. “Hey, buddy.” There’s softness in her voice, but she’s not patronizing. This nurse knows what it’s like to be a patient, indeed, to be a child with a serious illness. “I’d always wanted to do this,” says Megan (Hickey) Barbosa. “I was an oncology patient at 18 months.” She doesn’t remember that time, of course, but kids who’ve had cancer have follow-up appoint- ments for years. And she well remembers the summer camps she attended with other kids who’d been diagnosed at some point with pediatric cancer and the nurses who volunteered there. Now she’s a member of the latter group. USD graduates leave no stone unturned with their efforts to heal by Kelly Knufken T

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I expected,” Barbosa says. She reflects for a second and adds, “Well, sometimes it’s busier.” She and another nurse meet at a com- puter screen to check a patient’s chemo- therapy in advance of the procedure. It’s a complicated process that involves not a little math — square roots, many calculations — to determine the patient’s body surface area and the dosage he’s to receive. RCHSD was the only place Barbosa envisioned ending up, and her “very specific plan” for working there helped her land a rare slot in Hem/Onc as a new graduate. But there is one place she doesn’t seek to work — the procedure room, where children are put under general anesthesia for procedures such as a lumbar puncture. “Having been a patient, that’s a little too close.” “I’m constantly checking complaints, cleaning beds. There’s nothing I won’t do,” Barbosa says. “I definitely understand

what it feels like to be lying in that bed. I try to get to the beeps sooner because of that. The team here is amazing. We’re very tight-knit because of the patients. Everybody jumps in to help.”

arbosa ‘10 (MSN) is a charge nurse in Hematology/Oncology or “Hem/ Onc,” as it’s known. She’s answering phones and keeping tabs on everything that goes on. She’s got a pen tucked into her bun and is triaging and assigning nurses for the day’s chemotherapy infusions and lab work. “It gets a little crazy around here,” she says. She’s making sure she knows which nurses need help, and which ones can provide that help. She’s interrupted over and over. This is what it means to be a nurse anywhere. But today at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego (RCHSD), dozens of USD gradu- ates are making patients’ lives better. Yes, they take vital signs, coordinate care and even administer chemotherapy. But they also provide comfort. They’re passionate about pediatrics, and they’re up to the multi-tasking endemic to working in the state’s largest children’s hospital. “I don’t think it’s any different than

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lsewhere in Hem/Onc, Kristina Ost ‘92, ‘93, (MEd) is wearing navy blue scrubs, ready to be one of those jumping in to lend a hand. She’s a manager and attends a lot of meetings as a nurse educator charged with keeping the department nurses’ skills up to date, but the scrubs are a mark of her commitment to always be at the ready to help out bedside. “I feel like I have the best of both worlds, because I still get to take care of patients, but I also get to be involved on the other side of the spectrum with all of the deci- sions to be made,” Ost says. “Being a resource is the biggest and most important

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK ABADILLA

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