-: Jonathan Fernandez seated on a stool.
-: Hi there.
My name is Jonathan Christian Fernandez,
and I am a proud Latino, a member of the LGBTQ community
and most recently, I am a registered nurse
working in the front lines, battling COVID.
Growing up, we mostly spoke Spanish
until in school, we adapted to English.
As a young kid, I do remember
having to navigate my parents through the system of language
because my mother and father were applying for residency
in the States.
Me and my sister really had to step up
and really serve as interpreters for them
in every single case that involved
someone speaking to them in English
and them just not knowing how to really
100% navigate themselves through that situation.
I think for me, starting so young,
serving as an interpreter for my parents,
I learned so much about compassion towards people
and it started with my parents.
You know, they were very compassionate people themselves,
but to step into that role of interpreter,
I did carry that on through later, later years in my life.
I carried on the interpreting that I did for my parents,
and I served that interpreter for my patients.
So I now help them make medical decisions.
I now helped them to understand the other cultures
that were involved in our system
and explained to the doctors, to the other nurses,
their cultures, and how that made them different
and their decisions different.
During the pandemic, me and other nurses
were put on the front lines to battle COVID-19.
I wanna say that serving my role
as not only a medical provider as a nurse,
but also as an interpreter,
I feel like all of us
that were interpreting for our patients
really had to step in and do more work
than we ever did before,
because there was a sense of urgency during this pandemic.
Our patients,
were mostly in the beginning of the pandemic were Latino.
So they brought with them the cultures from home.
They brought with them the language,
but they also brought with them so much fear
of not understanding the medical system,
of not understanding the system in general.
It was a moment of great conflict,
having to explain to doctors,
hey, don't actually go through this so fast.
They need to process this.
There's the language barrier.
So that needs to come first.
But at the same time, there wasn't time.
They didn't have enough time on oxygen.
Being an interpreter you know,
having to explain everything for them,
take it step by step,
not having their family there.
Sometimes you wouldn't even have enough time
with your patient to set up a video conference with them.
You know, it was a very unique experience
where you really had to do things very quick
and my explanations had to be very quick.
So I feel like me and other Spanish nurses
really had to step in and serve
not only as interpreters, we had to serve as their family.
We had to take so much on our shoulders
as far as interpreting for our patients,
understanding pains that my colleagues
who don't speak Spanish will never know.
So I wanna say during the pandemic, during the thick of it,
I had my community of nurses.
We really banded together.
And these are people that just enriched
the worst moments of my life
and enriched the worst moments of our patients lives
because they themselves were interpreters.
I come from a background of arts
so I was really able to appreciate when one of them,
my friend Johaira Michelle, she told me,
let's do this music video.
Let's do a PSA.
All our patients are Latino.
Why don't we, let's just sing and dance and have fun
and this monster that was COVID, you know,
this was really our personal way as nurses
to combat this beast.
And we came together as a community
and we started working on these creative projects
and we started singing songs
and we eventually did music videos
and we really put all our passion into it, you know,
and we got like a production company.
And these were things that for me,
really kept me out of dark zones as a nurse,
which was so easy to fall into.
And I wanna say that creativity of helping more people,
of having fun, but helping more people.