For Andreia Candido, MSN, APRN, AGCNS-BC, health care definitely runs in the family.
She grew up in Brazil with the nearby influence of five doctors in her family. Along with her cardo-thoracic surgeon brother, there’s also a plastic surgeon, two cardiologists and a psychiatrist.
“I’m the only nurse,” says Candido. “They tried to persuade me at the beginning of my college (to become a doctor),” says Candido. “You still have time to come back,” they would tell her.
But she chose another path. She remembers gaining that career clarity in high school.
“I saw a cardiac arrest,” Candido recalls of a visit to an ICU as she was job shadowing a nurse. While the nurse she was shadowing tried to pull her away from what she thought might be a stressful moment for a high school student, she was drawn to it. “I was able to see all that movement and adrenaline.”
She went home that night having made nursing her career choice. She earned her BSN and worked as a bedside nurse for five years in Brazil before moving to Boston where she continued her work as a bedside nurse for another five years.
“I really like to stay with the patient,” she says. “I have this thing; I like to care for people and be close. I want to be with the patient all the time. That’s my goal.”
She moved to Anchorage three years ago after completing her master’s degree in nursing and earning her Advanced Practice Nurse credentials in Massachusetts. She joined Providence Alaska Medical Center (PAMC) as a clinical nurse specialist, one of four advanced practice nurse specialties.
“Our goal is to improve patient outcomes through daily rounds, bedside coaching, research and quality improvement,” says Candido.
Candido and a handful of other clinical nurse specialists help the hospital manage clinical change and keep pace with an always-evolving clinical practice. As a clinical nurse specialist, she influences and supports patient care, nursing, and systems of care at the hospital.
“We are a bridge between research, technology and the bedside nurse,” says Candido. “We bring innovation to the bedside nurse.”
Her department areas of focus at PAMC include the progressive care unit, renal care unit and dialysis suite.
“I love my career. I love my job,” Candido recently told her mother on the phone. “It’s something I say every day,” she says.
She’s proud to be a Providence caregiver and was attracted to the hospital’s constant focus on quality.
“They’re wonderful here,” says Candido. “They are constantly looking forward to improve the quality of care for patients as well as to improve the experience of the caregiver.”
She’s still drawn to codes. In fact, she chairs the hospital’s code committee. Recently she was instrumental in adding a new process step to support nurses who weren’t feeling well after a code. The change involved adding a debrief step and revising a form to make that debrief process clearer and easier to accomplish.
“Processes are very important,” says Candido. “But we need to think that people are more important than process. People are way more important.”
Candido is one of 1,224 nurses working at Providence Alaska Medical Center and one of more than 1,600 nurses who work in service of the Providence Alaska Region. The World Health Organization extended its 2020 “Year of the Nurse and Midwife” celebration into 2021. Providence couldn’t agree more.
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