4 minute read
Indian Nurse Moves his Career and Family to the U.S.
By Dawn Wolf-Taylor
India-born Hemant Sule (BSN 11) came to the United States to help his son pursue a dream. Hemant recalls asking his then 10-year-old son, Nishchay, what he wanted for his birthday, and getting the answer that he wanted nothing. Puzzled, he asked if he had any birthday wishes. Nishchay had watched footage of the Columbia space shuttle explosion on television and learned that one of the astronauts was a native of India. His wish, he told Hemant, was to be an astronaut. Hemant replied that he would “take him one step closer to NASA,” and that they would move to the United States so that his son would have the opportunity to fulfill his dreams.
Everything is possible, but there is no shortcut to success.
Hemant’s journey to secure a job as a nurse in America began with an interview in Mumbai, India through an international placement service for healthcare professionals. After 18 months of work on immigration procedures and adding another job to his workload to gain the specialized experience he needed to work in the U.S., Hemant took a pre-NCLEX preparatory test along with 1,100 of his international nursing peers, 700 women and 400 men. A total of 46 nurses passed, only two of them men. Hemant was one of those two. A second pre-test taken by the 46 resulted in 12 passes, and Hemant was the only male in that group. The 12 then flew to Saipan, an American territory near Guam where the New Mexico Board of Nursing was providing an opportunity to help foreign nurses gain U.S. RN licensure. Hemant was the sole person to pass the NCLEX exam, news that he had to wait a month to receive, and that brought tears to his eyes.
Hemant secured a nursing position and moved his family to the U.S., first to Los Angeles, CA and then to Albuquerque, NM. In Albuquerque, he was an emergency services nurse for Presbyterian Healthcare System for several years. Early on in his career in the U.S., he learned that a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree would be necessary to continue as a nurse in hospitals such as Presbyterian that were preparing to achieve Magnate-level status. “To stay ahead of the game,” Hemant explained, he began looking at BSN programs through both private and public universities and quickly became frustrated by the cost, time requirements, and lack of response to his queries. He said a call to ENMU’s nursing program “changed his life,” and that the enthusiastic and helpful response he received as well as the time and cost parameters fit perfectly with his educational needs.
Meanwhile, his wife Swapna and his son continued on their own educational journeys. Swapna will earn a BA degree with an emphasis in accounting soon from the University of New Mexico (UNM), and Nishchay is in his last year as a UNM electrical engineering honor student. Nishchay plans to pursue both a master of business in administration (MBA) and a graduate degree in electrical engineering, with the goal of earning a job at Sandia Labs in New Mexico as a weapons development specialist. Nishchay hopes that these goals will one day lead him to his ultimate dream job, director of NASA.
Not to be outdone by his talented family, Hemant is completing the leveling work toward an MBA of his own at Eastern and hopes to graduate with that degree by May 2014. An MBA will add to his credentials as he seeks future opportunities in hospital administration at his new place of work.
“Everything is possible,” Hemant says, “but there is no shortcut to success.”
Hemant credits his recently earned BSN with landing him a job last summer as emergency services nurse manager and acting director at Saint Vincent Infirmary and Medical Center in Little Rock, AR, but it was his son’s career aspirations that put him on his current path.
