Caroline Ortiz
Integrative Public Health Nurse, Researcher, & Educator
Caroline grew up bicultural and bilingual along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. During her youth, she encountered a myriad of perspectives on health: as the daughter of a nurse, she took western medicine and followed doctor’s orders and as the granddaughter of a loving Mexican woman, she drank her herbal teas, submitted to body sweepings with herbs and an egg, and followed the recommendations of the local traditional healer.
As a child, I did not understand the difference between Western biomedicine and traditional medicine. I just knew that receiving care from my grandmother and the local healer felt so much more love-infused than when taken to the doctor.
Pursuing nursing became a route to learn more about healing modalities. She began her nursing education with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. After working in Texas, she relocated to New York City in 2002 where, over the next decade, she worked as a nurse manager for the New York Blood Center. During her time there, she enrolled in a dual Master’s of Science in Nursing / Master of Public Health with a concentration in Community and Urban Public Health Nursing from Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Prior to graduating in 2009, she began working as an integrative nurse at Mount Sinai Beth Israel. For over a dozen years, she held roles as an educator, manager, consultant, and supervisor at the Urban Zen Initiative, Holistic Surgery Program, the Charles Evans Integrative Stress Management Program, and the Center for Health and Healing. Caroline also taught community health as an adjunct professor at Hunter College and in 2020 began producing Spanish-language guided imagery meditations and affirmations for holistic health and wellbeing for Health Journeys from her apartment during a pandemic-fueled quarantine.
As I further explored complementary and alternative medicine and holistic nursing, the childhood memories of my grandmother’s healing rituals and remedies and the feelings of being deeply cared for returned.
With 25 years of nursing experience, her work centers around promoting individual and community health through holistic approaches that have been shared locally, nationally, and internationally. Currently, she is an associate professor in nursing at Pacific College of Health and Science in the holistic nursing program and a doctoral candidate in nursing education at Villanova University. Caroline is currently apprenticing in curanderismo, the traditional Mesoamerican medicine from Mexico:
My decision to study traditional healing practices among Mexican-American women of deep South Texas is more an act of honor and gratitude to my ancestral medicine-keepers than being strictly an intellectual endeavor. Through this work, I am returning home to learn from caregivers and healers with the intention of sharing what the traditional medicine from ancient Mesoamerica by way of Mexico can teach us today about well-being and healing in mind, body, spirit, and emotions.
Researching the use of traditional medicine by Mexican American women living in the Texas Rio Grande Valley has brought her back full circle. Read more about curanderismo practices Caroline has integrated into her practice here.
Further Resources
View Caroline’s Nurse You Should Know Video here.
Listen to Caroline’s podcast interview.
Follow Caroline on Twitter and LinkedIn.
View Caroline’s discussion of Curanderismo: Traditional Mesoamerican Medicine for Healing Trauma
Stay tuned for Caroline’s pending publications:
- Curanderismo: A Traditional Healing System in Today’s America
- Current Experiences with Traditional Mexican Medicine by U. S.
- Women of Mexican Origin: An Integrative Review
Learn more about Curanderismo practices in our Hispanic Heritage Month overview.
Sources
We sourced the above information from Caroline Ortiz.
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 offers live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism and a page to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare is 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
- Critical Conversation on Health Equity and Racism Toolkit from the American Academy of Nursing
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
Help us paint the internet with nursing’s diverse origin stories. Follow this Medium publication, NursesYouShouldKnow on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, or @KnowNurses on Twitter to share and re-post our articles far and wide.
