Name: Emily Primavera
Class Year: 2023
Title: Registered Nurse
Organization: UMass Memorial Medical Center (Marlboro Campus)
1. In one sentence, what does your job entail?
Caring for multiple acutely ill patients from admission to the discharge process.
2. What planned and unplanned events connected you to your industry and your first employer after Holy Cross? How did you learn/decide it was a good fit for you?
After Holy Cross, I immediately entered an accelerated master’s program for nursing and earned my MSN,RN at Johns Hopkins University. My weekly meetings with Cameron Smith in the Career Center and events held by the Pre-Nurse Practitioner Club were very helpful in the application process for school. After passing my nursing licensure exam, I attended nurse hiring events for different hospitals in the greater Boston area and connected with both Holy Cross and Hopkins alumni who were nurses at hospitals I was interested in to learn more. Ultimately I decided the Medical-Surgical floor at UMass Marlboro was a good fit for me because it allowed me to continue growing the foundational skills I had learned in school and offered within a nurse residency program and offered room to grow within the UMass system and explore multiple different nursing specialties!
3. What were you involved in when you were on campus?
I was the co-chair of both Dance Marathon and the Nurse Practitioner Club, I worked on campus at the Jo, a peer mentor, and I was a tour guide!
4. What was your major and how did it affect your career decisions?
I majored in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy and a GSWS concentration on a pre-nursing track. Taking both humanity and science courses allowed me to understand the ways in which social factors could impact an individual’s health or access to healthcare, which led me to want to work in a smaller community hospital that doesn’t have as many resources as the larger city campuses.
5. What are one or two skills that you developed at Holy Cross that you use in your work?
Time management is something I use every shift, knowing how to prioritize different tasks and how to efficiently but also effectively provide patient-centered care. I don’t know if this is considered a skill, but also the importance of prioritizing mental health is something I learned at Holy Cross. I can’t provide the best possible care for my patients if I am burnt out and knowing how to care for myself on days I’m not working or knowing when to get help during shifts is super important.
6. What advice do you have for students on campus today?
Take advantage of all of the resources on campus! Try new things and activities, take classes that may be a little out of your comfort zone if they sound interesting, and definitely utilize the Career Center (seriously cannot thank Cameron enough for all of his support and help throughout the years)!!
7. What are your thoughts on how AI has impacted or will impact your industry? What advice do you have for students as they prepare to enter a professional world where AI is prevalent?
PLEASE do not use AI to cheat through nursing school because in your career there will be instances when patients are critically ill and knowing what to do or recognizing a decline in status can save someone’s life.