Alex Gonzalez
Peri-Operative Nurse & Informaticist
Alex is a Puerto Rican-American nurse. He was born and raised in Vineland, New Jersey and currently resides in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. He received his English degree from Rowan University in 2008 and after graduating, he worked as a 9th and 11th-grade English teacher for the Vineland Public School district. His decision to enter the nursing profession in 2012 was informed by his growing interest in healthcare and his commitment to serving as a leader in his community, and he completed an intensive 15-month accelerated BSN program from Rutgers School of Nursing in Newark, New Jersey in 2013.
Of all the units Alex worked since graduating nursing school — from intensive care to medical-surgical oncology, he found he was most passionate about peri-operative nursing. His most rewarding moments as a circulator nurse was providing comfort and care to surgical patients during their most vulnerable times. He has also witnessed the positive impact his presence as a Latino nurse can have on the perioperative experience of the Latino patient population. Alex went on to chair his unit’s nurse practice council and received the Patient Safety Award.
Alex also became a “superuser” during his hospital’s electronic healthcare record (EHR) implementation, where he was inspired by his experiences working in the operating room and seeing first-hand how technology can be integrated with nursing to improve patient care and staff satisfaction. From this experience, Alex decided to pursue his master’s degree in Nursing Informatics from New York University Rory Meyers School of Nursing, where he graduated as a valedictorian in 2021. In his current role as a Clinical Analyst, he partners with perioperative nursing and anesthesia leadership in building and maintaining the Epic-Optime and Epic-Anesthesia EHR applications. Alex plans to further his education by obtaining his EdD. He hopes that he can make a meaningful impact on diversity in the nursing student population and nursing workforce.
More About Alex
View Alex’s Nurses you Should Know Video here.
Sources
The information above was sourced from Alex Gonzalez.
Learn More
To learn more about inclusion in nursing and be part of the national discussion to address racism in nursing, check out and share the following resources:
Know Your History
- Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.
- American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
Examine Bias
- NurseManifest to attend live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism or to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare, an online course created by scientist Anu Gupta, to learn how bias is related to our brain’s neurobiology and can be mitigated with mindfulness.
- Revolutionary Love Learning Hub provides free tools for learners and educators to use love as fuel towards ourselves, our opponents, and to others so that we can embody a world where we see no strangers.
Support & Advocate
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
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