Juliana Sanchez

I decided to become a nurse and go to school to become a nurse when I took care of my grandma who was sick with cancer. I was taking care of her, managing her medications, and that got me into the thought process that I could do this for a career and help others who might not have the amount of resources that my grandma had. Before that, when I was in high school, I really had no previous experience in healthcare. That was my very first experience with someone who was receiving healthcare, staying in and out of the hospitals. I didn't initially think that I'd ever pursue a healthcare position up until then. That caregiving aspect inspired me to go to nursing school, which I eventually did. I started out as a nurse's assistant in 2018 before I started nursing school. I worked in a variety of healthcare settings as a nurse's assistant - I did home health, I worked in a hospital, and then I worked in a clinic for a little bit. Throughout my nursing career, I did my clinicals in cardiology, orthopedics, psychiatric care for adolescents, as well as oncology. As a nurse's assistant, I was always at the bedside, jumping in, not just doing the cares that I needed to do as a part of my role, but I would always be asking questions to the nurses, I would be at the bedside learning things, and I would even go a step further and ask doctors or surgeons, just anyone I could get knowledge from, questions so I could learn. I felt like I came out of nursing school very knowledgeable with a lot of experience. Today I'm a cardiac nurse in cardiology. I have two positions right now, both involving cardiac procedures and cardiac surgeries. My day-to-day role is either taking care of people before their surgery or after their surgery. Before surgery is a lot of preventative measures in preparation of the surgery or the procedure. Post-surgery is monitoring vitals, monitoring their heart rate and rhythm very extensively and frequently, making sure that their incisions from the surgery itself are healing, and making sure that in all aspects, all systems of the body, they're headed in the right direction. When things do go wrong and they're not headed in the right direction, or we have a post-op emergency, we're providing pretty critical care to them to get them back on that path or to save their life if needed. My biggest achievement is probably performing CPR. My second biggest achievement as I take on this new role of being a nurse innovator is that me and my business partner have actually created a new model that is patented of a patient gown. My partner, who's also a previous cardiac nurse, and I are working to get our model of our patient gown publicized so that we can make a big change and present this to Medline or to a major gown manufacturing company so that we can get our patients in a better gown that's more safe for everyone working with them, the patient, and provides more dignity and care to the patient. That's the second aspect of my career that's outside of the hospital walls.