Making a difference:
Standout nursing student finds his prayers answered
Graduating nurses will always remember their candle-lighting ceremony in a tradition hearkening back to nurse Florence Nightingale, the “Lady with the Lamp.”
Explore PBA’s nursing options The outcome of nursing education at Palm Beach Atlantic University is a competent nurse who is reflective, inquiring and able to apply nursing theory within the context of the Christian worldview while recognizing the needs of the patient, family and community.
Degree options include: • Bachelor of Science in Nursing • RN to BSN (online) • Master of Science • Doctor of Nursing Practice
Learn more at Go.pba.edu/nurse
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In 2016 Israel Montero discovered his calling to be a nurse while flat on his back with rock-bottom hemoglobin. “If you had waited one or two more days to get here, you could have died,” they told him at the hospital.
at a nursing home and another year and a half on a hospital unit that receives patients from the ICU.
A pastor’s son from Peru, Montero lay in bed praying and wondering if his illness could be a message from God. He was thinking, What am I doing with my life right now? I’m not doing anything.
acceptance came, Montero quit his job, sold his car, packed just one suitcase and headed to West Palm Beach. He had barely a couple months’ rent. He didn’t know a soul in the city, but he knew one thing: I’m meant to be here.
He earned his associate’s degree and studied the school directory of NursingCAS, an application service for nursing programs. The For three days he was drowsy and Palm Beach Atlantic entry jumped dizzy from his stomach ulcer and out at him. Oh wow, he thought. loss of blood. But he was alert PBA is a Christian school. It would enough to notice how hard his be amazing if I could go there. So he nurse worked to care for him. applied and prayed, making God “She was dedicated, compassionate, a promise to be faithful if granted smart and respectful,” he said. “I this opportunity. remember saying to myself, I want He’d never been to the East to be like her.” Coast before, but when the PBA
“And at that moment,” he recalled, “it was like I’m going to be a nurse. I prayed to God and asked Him to please let me do this, to provide meaning to life by being a servant of others.” Montero was a high school graduate at the time, living in Washington State and working at Home Depot. Straightway he enrolled at a community college and began his prerequisites for nursing school. He volunteered at a hospital, worked a year and a half
After his first semester, spring 2020, he began working at Good Samaritan Medical Center as a nurse assistant. In the fall he became a nurse extern, qualified to do more procedures. Montero, formerly without purpose, was impressing hospital staffers and nursing professors alike. “This young man is one of the most amazing hires I have ever encountered,” said Susan Théroux, administrative director of service
