Ebony Barrett
Neonatal & Pediatric Nurse Practitioner
Ebony is a Haitian-American nurse from Long Island, New York and has been a nurse for nineteen years. She was inspired to go into nursing because of a love of science and a sense of service instilled in her at a young age by her family. When she was a teenager, she helped to navigate an illness her mother endured, and through that experience, she learned the power of supporting a loved one in a time of need and how providing translation from English to Haitian Creole helped to provide her mother with clarity and assurance during her treatment. As an immigrant daughter and the eldest in her family, Ebony said that everyone always told her to become a doctor. However, the experience caring for her mother, combined with advice from a Sister at her place of worship when she was completing high school, motivated her to pursue a career as a nurse practitioner.
During nursing school she wanted to pursue oncology, but after she had a nurse externship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, she realized she didn’t have the “heart” to work in pediatric oncology. During her next nurse externship in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at NYU Langone Medical Center, she felt the nurses “took me under their wings” to teach her how to provide hands-on care for premature infants. After graduating from New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing in 2004, she started her first nursing job in the same NICU where she had been an extern during nursing school.
What makes neonatal nurses unique is that their patients can’t talk and tell them what they are feeling. They can show you through other signs and that’s when you have to be attentive to - the way they cry, the way they move, the color of their skin (pale, pink, blue), the way they kick…you don’t need to be able to speak to be able to tell someone you need help or attention…as an advocate for premature babies, I need to be fast on my feet and sharp in my mind for accurate clinical decision making…during their time in the ICU we become a family with the parents and their babies.
The following year, she enrolled in a graduate program to obtain her Master’s degree in Advanced Pediatric Nursing. She graduated in 2007 and was promoted to assistant nurse manager of the NYU Langone Medical Center pediatric service in 2008. In 2009, Ebony started her first job as a neonatal/pediatric nurse practitioner at NYU Long Island Hospital where she worked in the neonatal ICU. During this time, to further specialize in neonatology, she completed her post Master’s Advanced Certificate Program in Neonatal Health from Stony Brook University.
Babies are the best type of people on earth. They are authentically themselves and are the closest, purest form of God. In a single day I can root for a baby to keep going or provide dignity in times of death. My job enables me to connect with humanity at the smallest and largest scales. Giving is my love language. Giving to others makes me feel like I am living my purpose or mission in life. And that also includes giving to myself to keep my cup full as well.
In 2018 she moved to become a neonatal/pediatric nurse practitioner working 24-hour shifts with the The Brooklyn Hospital Center. The center is a safety net hospital that provides healthcare for individuals regardless of their insurance status. In her role, Ebony provided medical care to patients from diverse backgrounds, who spoke different languages, and worshipped different religions, but who were also connected in their humanity.
I valued my three years working in underserved communities with people who looked like me, spoke my language, understood my vernacular, and who I can relate to…and also what I learned about new patient populations, new kinds of religion and prayer, and how to provide culturally competent care that is rooted in the universal human condition.
At the start of the pandemic she gave birth to her second son, and returning to work during those “scary” times reminded Ebony of her experience volunteering in Port-Au-Prince during the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Both experiences, the pandemic and post-devastation from the earthquake, taught her that even when resources were limited, there is still so much one can provide, such as a hopeful attitude. Ebony leveraged what she had learned from being volunteer nurse in Haiti to find ways to “smile through the mask” and persist in delivering high quality patient care despite the high duress and instability of the first year of the pandemic.
At Brooklyn Hospital Ebony also became a certified neonatal resuscitation program (NRP) instructor by the American Heart Association and served as a NICU NRP instructor where she taught nurses how to resuscitate premature infants during cardiac arrest or choking. She moved back to NYU Langone Medical Center to pursue a 12-hour shift neonatal nurse practitioner opportunity in 2021, and marked almost two decades with the medical center where she was first a nurse extern. As a neonatal nurse practitioner, Ebony is one of only 2% of all nurse practitioners in the country who is specialized as an advanced practice nurse in the field of neonatology.
More About Ebony
View Ebony’s Nurses you Should Know Video here.
Sources
The information above was sourced from Ebony Barrett.
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