You are my god!

Author: Isamu Hayashi

Jingjing passed the examination of California vocational nurse certification and got her licensed vocational nurse certification in 2006 after three year study at home by herself.

Actually Jingjing was a professional nurse in China . She graduated in 1994 from a medical college of Shanghai with her major of vocational nurse.  After she graduated she had been assigned to a local hospital. There she worked more than 5 years.

Later she followed her husband moved to USA in the year 2000, she became a house maker until 2008.

She began to try to find a nurse job at the end of 2008 because her husband was laid off and stayed at home. She did not have to send her daughter to school every day, but soon she found it was not really an easy thing.

Firstly she tried to register in some vocational nursing companies. There was a company named Max Health Care Agent, one of its beautiful offices was in the second tallest building of the Ventura County , located on Business Street in Oxnard . Perhaps it got Jingjing’s information from state LVN database. It was constantly sending letter to Jingjing introducing its service. It seemed that this company is a kind of companies that hired nurses and sent them to the facilities or personal homes that needed the nurse support. It had its own website and many staffs busily working in multiple offices in different locations. Jingjing visited its office and the staff let her to do a test.  The test lasted for five hours. The examination papers included great details in medical treatments, equipments and related knowledge.

One month passed.  Max Health Care Agent called Jingjing and told her that she failed the test but she could try again. Jingjing got the paper back and reviewed the questions over again.  Several weeks later she took the test again. This time she passed the test. This company asked her to take a health examination and also take a CPR class. These took several weeks. The next step would be orientation. The supervisor would interview her.  After talking with Jingjing, the supervisor told her that because Jingjing did not have experience working in the US , Max Health Care Agent could not hire her. Four months passed there was no result.

Jingjing found an Ad on a website that said a Moorpark family based nursing care team needed a LVN nurse. Jingjing was very excited and asked her husband to go with her. The host, Nancy, was a very friendly lady, and after talking with Jingjing she said that there were no problems in communication. The patients were her two sons in their 20’s who were both in wheelchairs. There were two shifts to take care of them, including two LVN and several CNAs. Nancy told Jingjing that she welcomed her to come to help her family and Jingjing just needed to visit the care provider’s office to do some possible procedures.

Jingjing and her husband visited the care provider’s office in Calabasas. The office was on a noisy street with many small and narrow offices. The staffs looked very busy going in and out of the offices. The company’s staff gave Jingjing the whole orientation process as she was led through three different steps. In each step there was a different person to introduce some related details about the work, Such as how to report the patient situation, when to report work hours, and so on. The final step was an interview by supervisor. When Jingjing entered supervisor’s office, she looked at her and said directly, “Because you did not have experience working in US and your English is not good enough, we cannot hire you. If you wanted this job your English should be as fluent as your Chinese.”  

Jingjing continued to apply to any possible positions online, by mail, or through the phone, but no active result. Jingjing and her husband checked every possible facility nearby including hospital, health care center, help living facilities, and health care organizations. In each place Jingjing left her application with her resume. She had gone to many interviews but always failed in her interview. Four more months passed. She always got the same response which was that she did not have any experience working in US, but she wondered, how could she get experience if nowhere willing to hire her?  She questioned if the US was really in a shortage of nurse support.

In a lucky chance conversation Jingjing had on the phone with one of her friend, they asked her, “Why don’t you try applying for a job in countryside area?” Until now she had only tried Oxnard , Ventura , Camarillo , Thousand Oak, Calabasas, Moorpark, Fillmore and LA. This was a new idea for her.

Jingjing found an Ad from e-mail that Twin Pine Health Care in Santa Paula wanted a CNA . CNA refers to certified assistant nurse and it is a lower ranking than the LVN that Jingjing held a license to, but because since she failed to get a LVN position, she began to think about going back to the lowest level and start from the bottom up. For this reason she decided to visit this facility.

When Jingjing went to the office of Twin Pine health care, the first person that she met was Mrs. Cathleen, a strong built African-American lady. She was very friendly and cheerful. She asked Jingjing why she had applied for CNA . Cathleen knew that Jingjing had a LVN license because she had already checked Jingjing’s background on the internet. Jingjing said that she had failed to get the LVN position at every place she applied to. Cathleen said that it was not a difficult thing to training a new nurse, and wondered why others were not willing to do so.

“We could just start from a few hours a day and gradually increase the hours until you could stand the work.”

Mrs. Cathleen let Jingjing wait as she called the supervisor to come.  The supervisor’s name was Mrs. Bankers. She was also an African-American lady and looked older than Mrs. Cathleen. She looked at Jingjing for a while and asked,

“Are you professional nurse?”

 “Yes.”

Replied Jingjing.

  She said that the only thing that you need is to improve your language skill and get familiar with the circumstances. Then she said clearly.

 “You can work here, starting from a few hours per day and increase as your pace.”

And she wrote something down on a piece of paper and showed it to Mrs. Cathleen.  And then Mrs. Cathleen passed it to Jingjing. On this piece of paper was written: 21 dollars per hour.

Jingjing was so excited that she nearly cried. She said to Mrs. Bankers.

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Banker said to her.

“Please give thanks to God don’t hanks to me.”

Jingjing said.

“You are my God!”

Written on August 18, 2009