Kimberly Domingos, ’18 B.S. Nursing
By Marya Jones Barlow
In high school, Kimberly Domingos wrote a letter to her future self. When she opened it five years later, she was astonished by her teenage foresight.
“I predicted that I would have graduated from college and would be practicing nursing,” she said. “I was in awe because when the letter came I had just started taking my prerequisites for nursing. I had strayed from that path, but finally found my way back to what I wanted. That letter validated that I was on the right track.”
Today, Domingos is a registered nurse, working at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to care for pulmonary, renal, and infectious disease patients. She graduated in May from CSUCI with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree offered in Goleta and near Cottage Health. After completing her clinical training at Cottage, she felt right at home joining its nursing staff.
“It’s my dream job,” she said. “The teamwork and professionalism of everyone at Cottage is so inspiring. I love the patients and their families. Every day is different. As a nurse, there’s always something to learn.”
Domingos grew up on her family’s hay farm in Ventucopa, California, a town of 92 people in the Cuyama Valley. When it came time for college, she headed to San Luis Obispo and enrolled in Cuesta College to complete her nursing prerequisites, hoping to transfer and follow her older sister to Cal Poly for her degree.
She also took a job with Peacock Farms in Arroyo Grande. Over the next six years, Domingos managed the farm’s stand at regional farmers markets and helped with weddings, events and winemaking on the farm. She also found time to complete a bachelor’s degree in business online from the University of LaVerne, and met and married her husband.
In 2016 — shortly after receiving the reminder in her high school letter — Domingos got back on track to her dream job, entering CSUCI’s Nursing program with the renewed purpose of earning her second bachelor’s degree.
“I would absolutely recommend the Nursing program to anyone,” she said. “It’s rigorous and frustrating at times, but it pushes you to think critically and independently in every situation to the best nurse you can be.”
Domingos says the program’s supportive professors, state-of-the-art simulation lab, countless volunteer opportunities, and hands-on leadership projects in the community helped mold her into a confident nurse.
Her most memorable achievements included working on a group project providing monthly public health education for families in Isla Vista Youth Projects, Inc. in Goleta, and developing a sepsis care plan for nurses at Cottage Hospital that is used in every hospital unit today.
“The best part of my job is getting to know the patients and their families and earning their trust,” she said. “I had a patient’s family member recently call me and say, ‘I’m so happy you’re here. I know he’s in good hands.’ That made me tear up. It’s great when the families end up loving you because they see how much you care.”
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© Fall 2018 / Volume 22 /Number 02 / Bi-annual