Page 5 - MSN Nursing Informatics Specialization-01-25-2017a

PAT ARENALES

2016 GRADUATE

Growing up, Pat Arenales was greatly influenced by her mother,
a Registered Nurse. “I started out going to surgical tech school to
do medical transcribing and then was encouraged by my wonderfully
supportive parents to go into nursing school,” says Pat, who was born
in Guatemala, grew up in California, and lived in Puerto Rico for the first
15 years of her career. She became a surgical technician in 1998 and
a Registered Nurse in 2001 and started out at the Doctors Community
Hospital in Santurce, Puerto Rico. For four years thereafter, she worked in
an urgent care facility.
A move to Colorado

In 2004, Pat took an opportunity at Exempla Good Samaritan in Lafayette,
Colorado. Soon, she got a job with Kaiser Permanente. “Surgery has
always been my interest, and what I’ve done during my entire career at
Kaiser,” Pat says. Her experience is broad—from orthopedic to minor
plastics to cataracts. For seven of her nine years at Kaiser, Pat has worked
as a charge nurse, helping schedule procedures for the operating room.

Grateful to her employer

Kaiser Permanente is a place where Pat is grateful to work—for a number
of reasons. “They treat their employees very well and we have a voice on
how we do things here,” she says. “Our job as a nurse is a hard one, no
matter what. But when you have an organization that is truly interested in
helping patients long term and making the lives of the people who work
here better, you realize how lucky you are.”
That commitment to bettering its employees along with her own ambitions
to strengthen her resume and skills led Pat to pursue the BSN at Kaplan
University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2012. She enjoyed
the program so much that she decided to continue on for an MSN, but
explored other universities. “I wanted to find a program with eight-week
classes and an emphasis on informatics,” says Pat. “Technology is so
important in healthcare. I’ve always enjoyed working with computers and
learning about technology.” In her search, American Sentinel University’s
MSN, nursing informatics specialization stood out.

www.americansentinel.edu

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