LUZ NARANJO

Case Management

Long Island Jewish Valley Stream/Northwell Health

Luz Naranjo, a case management nurse, finds enormous “fulfillment and satisfaction” in nursing her patients back to health and seeing them through their recovery process. And while she’s touched and saved countless lives, she’s always had a soft spot for caring for the elderly and feels most at home on the floor of the geriatrics department.

For this seasoned veteran, it’s been a lifelong calling, beginning in her native Philippines decades ago. She joined the Northwell Health system in 1984; the Long Island Jewish Valley Stream Hospital team in 2017.

Her career been immensely rewarding on a “spiritual, emotional, professional” level, though not without tribulations. “Making sure everyone in the patient’s family is happy is challenging because you have to include them in the planning and keeping everyone pleased is not easy,” she says. But nothing compares to the feeling she gets when a patient “survives through the hospitalization and leaves with a smile on their face.”

And she’s seen plenty of smiles pass through the hospital doors during her length of her service, which is equally defined by the breadth of her experience in various roles ranging from the Intensive Care Unit to a discharge planner.

As for advice to any new or aspiring nurse, she says, “You don’t ever shortchange your patient. You give your best care, giving 100, 200 percent of yourself.”