“I’ve been a nurse for 47 years. Ever since high school, I truly believed this was my calling. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to make a difference with patients.”

I’ve been a nurse for 47 years. Ever since high school, I truly believed this was my calling. That’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to make a difference with patients. I come to work every day to hope that I make a difference, and that’s what my passion is about: nursing.

I want patients to know that they will get the best care from the nurses here at San Leandro. We really want to do the best care that we can for them. They are all children of someone, and I would hope that if I am in their predicament, someone would care about me.

I get really emotional when I talk about nursing, when I talk about the people we take care of, because I know not everybody is the same, but you have to treat them pretty much the same. They need you and you have the capability to provide what they need.

Every day, I’m still learning. Like with the electronic health record — it helps not only the providers know what’s going on with their patients and communicate that, but also the patients themselves. Access is very important to them. I believe that a lot of errors get prevented from having one record that everybody takes a look at versus different pieces of paper that could be lost. So I firmly believe in the electronic health record. I thought it was going to be really difficult to acclimate to the change, but I just got on with the challenge.

I love working. I love working here. People always ask me, “When are you going to retire?” Retirement is not in my vocabulary. I basically feel that as long as my mind and my body are healthy, I want to give. I can’t detach myself from caring.

Rose Del Rosario
Director of staffing
Alameda Health System–San Leandro Hospital