Joshua Guzman, a senior nursing student, is working as a Patient Care Assistant at the Hackensack Meridian Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood, NJ.
Senior nursing student Joshua Guzman is one of the many Dominican College students who are on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19. Joshua is a Patient Care Assistant at the Hackensack Meridian Health Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood, NJ, where he has worked since November 2018.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Joshua has taken on extra shifts and rotated between two COVID-19 floors, the Intensive Care Unit, the Critical Care Unit, and the Emergency Room. He pointed out that nurses who have been on the job for 20 or 30 years have never seen anything like this pandemic, and he is experiencing it with them. “I definitely feel very blessed that I am able to help out,” he said. “Besides the fact that it’s obviously an experience that’s unfortunate, it’s definitely one that is going to be useful in my career.”
In addition to helping the nurses provide patient care, Joshua has also been assisting families in communicating with COVID-19 patients though face-time. He said the use of technology is comforting to family members who are unable to visit patients, but who long to see and communicate with their loved ones.