Student Spotlight: Carmody aims to use his fluency in Spanish in his nursing practice, especially when it comes to providing health education to Spanish-speaking patients, particularly immigrants.
Sean Carmody, MA, has a career as a Spanish lecturer at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), but he also had a dream of one day becoming a nurse and using his Spanish language skills to help patients receive the care they need. He just didn’t think it would be possible for him to pursue his dream and provide for his family.
Carmody’s passion for nursing began when he became ill with an acute kidney injury in his early 20s and needed to be hospitalized. “All the nurses, they just really made the stay bearable,” he reflects. After three months of dialysis treatments and follow-ups, he fully recovered.
A decade later, Carmody was teaching full time at UMBC and decided that becoming a professional interpreter could help supplement his income; he took a training course on the subject and started working as a Spanish medical interpreter at Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center (LHAAMC) in 2016, where he saw firsthand how nurses educate their patients to manage their health. “These nurses are really doing something great, and I want to be able to contribute to that with Spanish language interpreting,” he says. A couple of weeks after Carmody started interpreting, he registered to begin his nursing school prerequisites and began classes at UMBC while still maintaining his teaching and interpreting jobs.
By fall 2018, Carmody was enrolled in UMSON’s Clinical Nurse Leader master’s option but struggled to fund his education and support his family. He applied for UMSON’s Conway Scholarship (see “$13.8 Million Marks Largest Gift in UMSON History,” Page 5) and was accepted. “This scholarship came to me as a blessing at a time when I was deeply doubting my ability to continue my studies in nursing because of financial needs,” says Carmody, who anticipates graduating in December.
Carmody aims to use his fluency in Spanish in his nursing practice, especially when it comes to providing health education to Spanish-speaking patients, particularly immigrants.
“Being healthy is harder when you’re an immigrant to begin with, and then you throw a chronic disease on top of that, along with the language barrier – and a medical system that may be both linguistically and culturally not geared toward you,” he explains. “COVID-19 has brought to light a lot of barriers to the Spanish community.” Inspired by his own experiences with interpreting and interacting with patients with chronic diseases at LHAAMC, upon graduation Carmody plans to specialize in health education management of chronic diseases, with a focus on patients with diabetes. His goal is to work in pediatric care, but he says he is happy to serve in whatever setting he is needed most.
Managing two jobs – his teaching and his interpreting – and nursing school is hard work, Carmody says, but it is made easier through a support system, including his Conway mentor, Laura Koo, MS, RN, CRNP, FNP-BC, assistant professor. Koo has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish herself and helps Carmody focus on the big picture. “Being able to talk to her is such a huge source of encouragement,” he says. “I’m just extremely grateful for all the support from the Conway Scholarship, my mentor, all the faculty at UMSON and UMBC. I am confident that my calling to become a nurse will indeed be fulfilled.”
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE SPRING 2021 ISSUE OF NURSING/FORUM MAGAZINE.