DNP-FNP student: ‘I really like building that relationship with patients’

UCI Health nurse Nellie Quitangon was accepted into the UCI School of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice-Family Nurse Practitioner Program (DNP-FNP). She starts this fall.

As a nurse navigator, Nellie Hayin-Quitangon becomes very close with her patients and their loved ones as she guides them through colorectal cancer treatment.

In her six years working at the UCI Health H.H. Chao Comprehensive Digestive Disease Center (CDDC), she has been there with patients when they are diagnosed, have surgery and move through aftercare.

“I really like building that relationship with patients and having a longer time to spend with them,” she says.

An inspiration to go forward

One day while working at the center, she encountered a patient who would inspire her to go forward in her nursing career.

It was a man with a wound so severe, it wasn’t operable. He was there with his wife and son.

“There was nothing we could do for the wound. I just held his hand and told him that if he needed anything, we were there,” Hayin-Quitangon remembers.

“Sometimes we just need to be human for our patients. It’s not always just about what we can do clinically.”

Sitting there with the man and his family, seeing him as a whole person with a life, inspired her to apply to enroll in the UCI Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice Family Nurse Practitioner Program (DNP-FNP). She did so, encouraged by CDDC colorectal surgeons Drs. Joseph Carmichael and Steven Mills.

She was accepted last month and starts this fall.

From optometry to nursing

Hayin-Quitangon with Dr. Joseph Carmichael and the UCI Health H.H. Chao Comprehensive Digestive Disease Center.

Hayin-Quitangon hadn’t always had her sights set on nursing. Instead, she thought she’d be an optometrist.

It wasn’t a fit. Lamenting to her cousin about it one day, “She said why not join me in nursing school?” Hayin-Quitangon took her up on it and enrolled.

Although she figured she’d pursue an advanced degree one day, it was a matter of when God would show her it was the right time.

One of her instructors was pursuing his DNP while she was in his class. She remembers him as incredibly hard-working, taking the train from Los Angeles to San Diego for his own classes. It inspired her.

Another instructor who had her DNP advised Hayin-Quitangon, “Whatever you do in your career, make sure you get to this point.”

Since she wants to join a nursing school faculty and teach someday, Hayin-Quitangon was all too happy to take the guidance.

Pursuing degree with family support

Hayin-Quitangon plans to continue her full-time job at the CDDC, but it was a conversation she needed to have with her husband of 10 years.

“Before I even applied, we talked about it and agreed that it was a good time,” especially since their two children, a girl, 7, and a boy, 4, are a little more self-sufficient. Her husband also works from home now due to COVID, and her parents live nearby too.

“We’ve got a great support system.”