Nursing grads fill community need

Mount Saint Mary College nursing graduates (from left) Brittany Marrone, Alex Peguero-Medrano, Amanda Duffy, and Sean Murphy

The highly competitive, nationally accredited nursing program at Mount Saint Mary College produces top notch new nurses capable of providing quality patient care.

“The Mount’s nursing program was very rigorous and thorough, with a special emphasis on building up and strengthening our critical thinking skills,” said Brittany Marrone of Westerlo, NY.

She begins her career as a cardiac telemetry nurse on a progressive care unit at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, NY later this month. Cardiac telemetry involves the transmission of a patient’s cardiac signals (electric or pressure derived) to a receiving location where they are monitored.

Amanda Duffy of Nichols, N.Y. has also been hired. She’ll work as a nurse at Our Lady of Lourdes Memorial Hospital, Binghamton, N.Y.

“The Mount prepared me not only academically, but on a psychological and social level as well, to venture into the world of nursing,” noted Duffy.

Best feature of the Mount’s nursing program is the “amazing professors,” said Duffy. Students named faculty members Jill Sussman, Jeanne Roth, Dianne Murphy and Ann Corcoran as favorites.

“It’s their knowledge of ‘why’ that sets Mount nursing students apart from others,” said clinical instructor Mary Lyman, who supervised senior nursing students at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, NY, this spring.

This “intensive understanding of how and why the human body works as it does” helps prepare “well-rounded nurses with better assessment skills,” Lyman added

As students shadowing a staff registered nurse, they gained valuable clinical experience, boosting their critical decision making skills and confidence in their ability to care for future patients.

Clinical experiences in hospitals, and the computerized patient simulators in state of the art labs on campus, were cited as vital aspects of the nursing program at the Mount.

“The real-life simulations in lab helped me refine my skills,” said Alex Peguero-Medrano of Newton, NJ. During clinical he was “able to put those skills into perspective and come to the realization of what nursing is truly all about,” he added.

And Peguero-Medrano, along with nearly two dozen Mount Saint Mary College nursing students carrying a half ton of vitamins and medical supplies between them, traveled to the Dominican Republic in January on a humanitarian mission.

With faculty members Murphy and Corcoran, Peguero-Medrano and other nursing students used their skills to serve in the poorest communities as volunteers with the not-for-profit Foundation for Peace, dedicated to helping people in materially impoverished areas by providing educational support, healthcare access, economic opportunity, and hope.

“As a native of Dominican Republic,” said Peguero-Medrano who emigrated to the U.S. in 1995, “I felt blessed to take care of the poorest in my country. This was the first time I traveled to my country since I came to the U.S. It was an amazing experience, a mission trip to provide care and learn from people of another culture.”

Peguero-Medrano, who was named the 2011 Student of the Year by the New York State Cooperative & Experiential Education Association, aspires to a career as a nurse anesthetist.

Sean Murphy of Port Jervis, NY, was also one of the nursing students who served in the Dominican Republic.

“It was an incredibly humbling experience. These people lack basic health care services which we take for granted,” said Murphy.

Murphy will be employed after graduation at Mount Sinai Hospital, a teaching hospital acclaimed internationally for excellence in clinical care.

Mount Saint Mary College offers the only nationally accredited four year nursing degree program in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley. Mount graduates consistently outperform the state average on the NCLEX-RN exam. The Mount also offers a continuum of study for a master’s degree.

Alumni have been recognized in many areas. The New York State Nurses Association bestowed its Administrator of the Year award upon Margaret Armento-McDowell, president of Bermac Home Health Aides, Inc. in New Paltz, NY. Another Mount alumna, Margaret Deyo-Allers of St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, NY, was named the Hudson Valley’s Top Nurse. And alumna Susan Davis is president and CEO of St. Vincent’s Medical Center and St. Vincent’s Health Services in Bridgeport, CT.