• Hometown: Palisades Park, NJ

What Mariana says:

I am grateful I have been given the opportunity to work with a great team that is doing a tremendous job in caring for their patients and providing the best care possible in these hard times. I have come across cancer patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have fully recovered. Being able to provide our patients with the necessary tools to provide quality care such as having our own COVID-19 screening kits and providing consultations to those who need procedures or consultations has been a very rewarding experience.

Being able to provide our patients with the necessary tools to provide quality care such as having our own COVID-19 screening kits, and providing consultations to those who need procedures or consultations, has been a very rewarding experience.

Her job:

As a care coordinator intern at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I have been assigned to assist nurses in the process of lobby screening. When a patient comes into the Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers for their scheduled appointments we must screen patients before allowing them into the building. If a patient is presenting any symptoms such as fever, cough, difficulty breathing, body aches and chills the patient must be tested for COVID-19 onsite.

When a patient is presenting symptoms, I take charge of canceling any appointments that the patient had for the day, making the patient a COVID-19 screening appointment, printing out labels used by the nurses to send the screening kit to the lab, and contacting the office coordinators for each canceled appointment to make them aware of the situation so they can reschedule for a later date.

Why public health?

I have had the opportunity of meeting amazing professors at the Bloustein School that are very passionate about public health and have educated me on the importance of public health in our communities. Public health has taught me a wide range of fields that are involved in helping the community in clinical and nonclinical settings. I have always been passionate about the topic of healthcare and providing the community with the resources and help they need. I look forward to working at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after graduation, where I will be exploring my career further and begin an accelerated nursing program.