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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – New Brunswick, N.J. (March 24, 2021) – At the height of the pandemic last spring, as emergency rooms responded to a rapidly growing need, more than 1,000 Rutgers medical, nursing and pharmacy school students joined the front lines to battle COVID-10 – and, of those, more than half graduated early as part of New Jersey’s race to help.
A year later, four students shared their stories about what it was like to graduate and join the fight against a global pandemic. Here are the reflections on the past year from graduates of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers School of Nursing and Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy.
Jorge Naranjo was among the physicians who graduated April 10, a month earlier than planned, from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Rutgers moved up their graduation to provide hospitals and residencies with much-needed staff power. He is now a resident at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS), training at University Hospital in Newark.
Elizabeth Ginalis graduated in May from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She is now a neurosurgery resident at RBHS, training at University Hospital in Newark, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick and Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.
Ashley Lopez graduated from Rutgers School of Nursing in May, and now works at Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick, in the neonatal intensive care unit. She was one of the nurses who received emergency licenses before taking their board exams, through a state initiative to prevent pandemic-fueled licensing backlogs.
Timothy Amin graduated in May from Rutgers’ Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, one of the group of students who graduated early and received emergency pharmacist licenses, before taking their board exams, from the state of New Jersey. He is now a pharmacy resident at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.