Ten De Anza College nursing students met Gov. Gavin Newsom at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds’ vaccination clinic on Feb. 9, where Newsom thanked them for their work and took a photo with seven of them.
Clementina Lambert, 37, nursing major, said she appreciated the visit.
“It was a great feeling,” Lambert said. “I want to help my community, but I don’t have the skills currently. I can’t help right now because we are in a pandemic, so we are not allowed (in hospitals). So knowing that he was there, whatever he can do, it was great.”
Since the clinic had already opened by the time of the meeting, the students did not get much time to talk with the governor. They focused instead on the task at hand: vaccinating the public
“I think that’s something our instructors did really good, maintaining the flow of this vaccine clinic,” said Michael Perea, 37, nursing major. “Even though you have somebody as big as the governor, we still have our patients who are the priority.”
These De Anza students have been administering the vaccine for four weeks. At first, 22-year-old nursing major Chloe Goulding said she felt nervous applying her practice of injecting oranges to injecting actual people.
That fear turned into a sense of caution and attention to her patients’ needs.
“I was already nervous about this quarter because we were going to be doing a lot with needles — and then I find out we’re going to be administering vaccines as soon as we start,” Goulding said. “I still get nervous, just not at the fact that it’s needles, but that I need to make sure that I asked my patient all the questions, I do the proper screening, and I follow protocols and procedures.”
Besides practicing on oranges, these students have undergone hours of training to be able to administer the vaccine. Goulding described the process of being certified.
“We had to observe 12 vaccines being administered by another registered nurse and then we sat at a table with our instructor right by us while they watched us administer three to four vaccines,” Goulding said. “And then we had one of the clinic supervisors, who’s a nurse, come and watch us as well to sign us off that we can administer them on our own.”
Regardless of Gov. Newsom’s visit, these students share a passion to vaccinate people and return the world to normalcy as quickly as possible.