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C H A M IN A DE MAGAZI NE
Caring for Caregivers As a nursing major, Rosemarie Maltezo was excited for her junior year. It’s when she was going to get to work hands-on in a clinical setting and put into practice some of what she had learned about patient care in the last two years in the classroom and simulation lab. Maltezo was assigned to the 9th floor of the Diamond Head Tower at Queen’s Medical Center, and spent her time shadowing and assisting the unit’s nurses. But a week after her clinical coursework ended, COVID-19 hit and she received a message from her professor saying that the whole 9th floor had been turned into a COVID unit.
That hit home. The nurses Maltezo had been working alongside were now on the front lines of combating a still very mysterious and unpredictable global disease outbreak. Maltezo wanted to help. She was the president and founder of the Chaminade Health Occupational Schools for America (HOSA) Future Health Professionals Club, and they were slated to do a community service project with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America in April. When that event was canceled, Maltezo saw it as an opportunity to get down to the core of who they were and what they believed in.
