Melanie Dos Santos (20) was inspired to be a family nurse practitioner after her experiences in the PLNU Health Promotion Center (HPC) as an undergrad.
After graduating with her BSN, Dos Santos jumped right into the healthcare field, building on her experiences in undergrad to provide compassionate care for those in need. She initially screened for COVID at a clinic a few months after passing her NCLEX (standard licensing test).
“Then got to know one of the RN Supervisors,” Dos Santos explained, “and I got a job as a Float RN at Sharp Rees-Stealy Outpatient Clinics where I did triage, vaccines, assisted with procedures, etc.”
Soon after he started working on the cardiopulmonary floor at Sharp Memorial, then in 2022 moved to Nebraska to work as an oncology nurse for Nebraska Medical Center.
“Here we treat patients with blood cancers, leukemias and lymphomas,” Dos Santos said. “We give chemotherapy treatments, stem cell transplants, and CAR-T cell transplants, and also treat overflow cancer patients with solid tumors. It’s a pretty neat speciality and has been my favorite job so far!”
As an undergrad at PLNU, she was challenged to use her skills in her growing healthcare career—even in unexpected ways.
“So I used to always say, when I was getting my nursing degree, ‘I’ll work anywhere except for a clinic, like that would just be so boring,’” she said. “The Lord’s funny, I feel like, because He said ‘I’m going to put a passion in you.’ I signed up to volunteer at the Health Promotion Center during undergrad because 90% of the population speak Spanish, and I speak Spanish, so I thought it would be a great opportunity.”
The HPC is a clinic run by PLNU staff and students that provides free or low-cost healthcare to underserved populations in San Diego. Most nursing students have the opportunity to serve there in order to gain valuable experience and required hours.
“I fell in love with underserved community health care,”
“I fell in love with underserved community health care,” Dos Santos explained, “and fell in love with just being able to provide excellent care for people that are underserved, not insured, immigrants, or people who generally don’t receive care at all just because of low resources. [Often] they probably don’t receive as good of care because of language and cultural barriers.”
Dos Santos’ time at the HPC helped lay the groundwork for her career trajectory, largely due to the people she worked with and the process she both witnessed and participated in.
“I got to work with Kristen Kellogg, Amanda Thurman, and Professor Mary Rowe,” she said. “All three of them are nurse practitioners. It’s a nurse practitioner-run clinic, and it was amazing to see how much they were able to do for the community with their degrees. People can come in for physicals, get labs, get referred out, and it’s all at no cost to them! Or minimal cost when they do get imaging or vaccines elsewhere.”
The environment in the HPC encouraged Dos Santos and showed her the joy that’s possible in healthcare.
“We would be hanging out, laughing with patients, laughing with each other. We always, before starting clinic, would do a little devotional together and pray together.”
Dos Santos draws on her time at PLNU as a strong foundation to take into her career. Not all nurses go on to pursue graduate degrees, but Dos Santos has a specific goal in mind. With a family nurse practitioner degree, she’ll be able to work in a clinic setting, care for families, and make more decisions for families’ care, including prescribing medicine.
She’s not only learned what it’s like to work in a clinic setting from the HPC, but also made friends and community along the way.
“Point Loma was just such a great place to go to school.”
“Point Loma was just such a great place to go to school,” she said. “The lifelong relationships that get built at Point Loma really shaped me and helped me to value rich community in my life. Point Loma professors really care about us as students, so we can both learn and thrive. They’re always so available to help or to answer questions.”
Working in the HPC, Dos Santos got to experience nurses’ compassion, hear patients’ stories, and encounter all different kinds of medical situations, including a button stuck in someone’s ear. In her time there, she used her language skills often; Dos Santos speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
“I’m not Latino; I’m Portuguese,” she explained, “but I learned Spanish growing up through a family friend, and I’ve always asked this question of ‘God, why? There has to be more to me knowing Spanish and I want to use this gift you’ve given me.’ And now I know I can bridge the gap of cultural and language barriers in healthcare. What really impacted me was seeing how much of a difference you could have in someone’s health and in their life, not only through your knowledge of health, but also with breaking down cultural and language barriers in a way that’s helpful. It’s sweet too, when you develop a connection with a patient and you speak their language — they feel, I think, so much more taken care of.”
Dos Santos loves being able to use her language skills to draw closer to patients in the oncology ward and looks forward to the future when she’ll be a family nurse practitioner. Her ability to use language as a tool for compassion and communication informs much of her nursing practice.
“When you develop a connection with a patient and you speak their language, they feel so much more taken care of, so much more seen, and so much more safe. I don’t take that lightly at all; to me, it’s just such an honor.”
