When the Student Cares for the Teacher

You know you were a good teacher when you get excellent care from your former students! Beloved lecturer Barbara Demman shared her recent experience at Ronald Reagan UCLA Hospital:

“I was admitted one month antepartum, and post C-section my newborn was admitted to the NICU for one month. During this time, my baby and I had the experience of receiving nursing care from several of my past nursing students.

Incredibly, on the day of my emergency C-section, the labor and delivery nurse, NICU nurse, and post-partum nurse were all former students of mine from the past ten years of teaching!

Ileana Fonta (’12), the labor and delivery nurse, was wonderful: calm, cool, and collected during the emergency and was my total advocate. Post-partum nurse, Delilah Garcia (‘17) was a true nursing educator — teaching me post-partum and new baby skills. She also joked with me, ‘This is strange to be doing a physical assessment on the person who taught me physical assessment.” Josephine Sunga (‘12) signed up to be the primary nurse for our little baby Rocky in the NICU, telling me when she saw “baby girl barbara demman” coming to the NICU, she immediately signed up to be the primary nurse and cared for my baby as much as possible. Josie was very gracious saying, ‘she felt the best way to share her gratitude to me was to care for my baby during this vulnerable time.’ And I couldn’t agree more... Josie is a fantastic nurse going above and beyond in all ways!

Special thanks to all of the UCLA alumni nurses who were such excellent, high quality nurses including Skylar Meinhardt (MSN’16), Reece Barba (’17), Christine Cheng Jiang (’10), and Lindsay Dean (’12). It was so inspiring to watch them in action and see how they have become caring and competent nurses. While mentoring nursing students, I strive to instruct and train them so that I would feel comfortable with them caring for my family. I didn’t realize this would manifest so soon and the patients would be me and my baby.

Baby Rocky is home and everyone – mom, baby and dad – are doing well. Seeing former students in action is just one of the advantages of having a School of Nursing linked with an Academic Health Center. UCLA Health System employs and trains our new graduates, moving them from novices to experts and facilitating compassionate and highly skilled care.