{"id":4144,"date":"2018-12-13T08:26:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T13:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=4144"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:21:53","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T18:21:53","slug":"where-i-need-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2018\/12\/13\/where-i-need-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Where I Need To Be’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Natalie Bonilla Romero ’09 trained as a doulah while a teenager in New York City but expanded her health care knowledge at EMU. She spent several years as an emergency room nurse before becoming a nurse practitioner.<\/p><\/div>\n

QUICK MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS\u00a0<\/strong>and \u201cmaking sure all the patients get taken care of the right way\u201d don\u2019t always equate, Natalie Bonilla Romero ’09 said recently. A nurse practitioner in an Atlanta-area clinic, she\u2019d just gotten off work late, again. A patient with \u201cpretty basic\u201d upper respiratory symptoms also had unrelated lab test results Romero wanted to explain.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThat, in a nutshell, is primary care,\u201d she said \u2013 not with resignation, but with conviction that what she offers her patients is making a difference.<\/p>\n

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At a very early age, Romero found herself in a health care provider role. Her dad and mom, from Colombia and Ecuador respectively, and extended family relied on her for interpreting at medical appointments and translating documents. She observed quickly \u201ca need for more representation of the Hispanic community in health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

She became interested in midwifery, and as a teen became a doula. After her family moved from New York City to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Romero gained experience through connections with Amish midwives.<\/p>\n

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When she enrolled in community college, though, she was encouraged to broaden her training and pursue a nursing degree, and she soon transferred into EMU\u2019s nursing program.<\/p>\n

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It was difficult, landing on an unfamiliar campus where she knew no one, had no car, and was hours away from her parents \u2013 and the coursework wasn\u2019t easy, either. She had to retake a couple classes, and remembers the pressure of knowing that passing was a requisite for advancing.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy dad was a cab driver in New York City, and my mom was a housekeeper,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt like my parents came to this country to make something amazing out of their lives, and although that couldn\u2019t happen for them, they instilled these values and morals in me, to say, \u2018You are going to make a difference.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Mastering those difficult classes and ultimately graduating, she believed, would be proof of that \u2013 and would be a \u201csort of saying \u2018Thank you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She hunkered down in the library. \u201cI pretty much became a hermit,\u201d she said \u2013 a determined one: \u201c\u2018I\u2019m gonna do this,\u2019\u201d she remembers telling herself. \u201c\u2018This is what I set out to do.\u2019 I finished and passed, but I struggled and I studied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once she found her footing, she fell in love with the EMU social scene, was active in the Latino Student Alliance, connected personally with professors (that connection continues: last fall she met with Professor Laura Yoder<\/strong> for dinner), and appreciatively attended chapel services.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was definitely where I needed to be, the small community,\u201d she said. \u201cI like that the professors knew my name, knew where I came from, what my story was about. That made a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from EMU, Romero spent time in community and emergency medicine, in part at Gwinnett Medical Center in Atlanta. Caring for a spectrum of the population, and not providing only maternity care, felt right: \u201cThis is the role that I was really meant to fill,\u201d she realized.<\/p>\n

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Romero continued working and enrolled in a dual-degree, three-year program, and earned her MSN and nurse practitioner\u2019s licence. Now, she\u2019s seeing her own impact, a culmination of her life\u2019s experiences, particularly when she meets with patients grateful for a Spanish-speaking care provider.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I walk into a room, patients look at what I would look like, and they start speaking in Spanish,\u201d she said. \u201cWe immediately have that rapport \u2013 and yet we\u2019ve only said \u2018Hello.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That translates into better care.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou bypass this gap in medicine because they already feel like, \u2018Oh well, she\u2019s kind of like my family member, and she understands exactly what I\u2019m about to tell her,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt leads to that connection with them and therefore the trust that you need.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

QUICK MEDICAL APPOINTMENTS\u00a0and \u201cmaking sure all the patients get taken care of the right way\u201d don\u2019t always equate, Natalie Bonilla Romero ’09 said recently. A nurse practitioner in an Atlanta-area clinic, she\u2019d just gotten off work late, again. A patient with \u201cpretty basic\u201d upper respiratory symptoms also had unrelated lab test results Romero wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":4145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-winter-2018-19","category-magazine","issues-fall-winter-2018-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4149,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions\/4149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}