Paulo Jusay
Doctoral candidate in nursing program learned
the value of education at Cal State LA
By Madeline Tondi
Cal State LA News Service
As a young boy, Paulo Jusay would accompany his grandfather to a clinic in their small town in the Philippines.
His grandfather was a doctor, and his patients had little or no money. They would often pay for their treatment with items such as bags of rice, which his grandfather gladly accepted. The compassion and concern that his grandfather displayed toward his patients left a lasting impression on Jusay.
“I’ve always wanted to help people ever since,” Jusay says. He credits California State University, Los Angeles with providing the education for him to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.
The 39-year-old Fullerton resident will graduate in May with a Doctor of Nursing Practice. The nursing program is offered through a consortium of the schools of nursing at Cal State LA and two other CSU campuses.
Jusay earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cal State LA’s Patricia A. Chin School of Nursing. He says the University’s academic culture fostered his appreciation for the value of higher education.
“We’re always told that completing a bachelor’s degree should not be the end of our educational career,” he says. “Cal State LA convinced me to continue to learn.”
His interest in the sciences and passion for helping people led Jusay to earn a certification as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), which entailed working long hours in a busy hospital emergency room. That experience opened his eyes to different aspects of the medical field and solidified his desire to be an emergency room nurse.
“What led me to become an EMT was the drive to help people,” Jusay says. “When I was exposed to how nurses work in the [emergency room], I knew that’s what I wanted to be. Just the variety of things they do, not only knowing about the illness, but also connecting to patients on a personal level.”
In March, Jusay used that drive to defend his doctoral dissertation, titled “Improving First Case Start Efficiency in Interventional Radiology: A Quality Improvement Project.” He developed a system at City of Hope Interventional Radiology to reduce the frequency of delays for the first patient of the day. He used a checklist of patient information to solve potential issues before an appointment.
The system reduced delay times, which Jusay describes as a small but important step for improving patient care. He looks forward to building on that success as he embarks on the next chapter in his professional career.
“My inspiration was to provide high quality care for my patients, aside from what I’m already doing with clinical care,” Jusay says. “I’ll be able to implement more change into my workplace to improve patient outcomes with the tools that I learned from my doctoral degree from Cal State LA.”