Liane Pellegrini, Registered Nurse at Las Cumbres Community Services
Liane Pelligrini, RN, joined the agency’s Adult Services Program in November 2020 and she has been particularly instrumental in getting the COVID-19 vaccine distributed to select clients and staff. She shares her background story with us here.
I was born and raised in Northern California and moved to Taos in 2006. In 2016, as a single mom, I decided to make the leap into the nursing profession and began my pre-requisites when my daughter was three. I was admitted into the UNM-Taos College of Nursing and UNM-Albuquerque in their dual degree nursing program in the fall of 2018. I graduated in August 2020.
I feel so lucky that this small town in Northern New Mexico has such a great nursing program! The program I came out of is known to be academically rigorous and I graduated with an ADN and a BSN. I feel a big sense of pride having been educated through UNM-T and UNM main. The curriculum and clinicals in which I was enrolled focused on training us to care for folks across the lifespan, with an emphasis on our unique populations and needs of Northern New Mexico. I certainly left the program feeling grateful for the opportunity to be educated, as well as with a desire to give back to my community.
Prior to nursing school, I worked in a CNA capacity as a home health aide, mostly working with hospice and in end-of-life situations. This work, and observing nurses in this setting, is what inspired me to go to nursing school. One thing I love about the nursing profession is that there are so many ways to show up for people in a nursing capacity outside of hospital or tertiary healthcare settings. Coming to work with Las Cumbres’ Adult Services programs is one way for me to do this. Our population of adults who identify as having intellectual or developmental disabilities is one of the most vulnerable peoples of our society, and meeting these individuals and the people who care for them has been such an eye-opening and important experience. Learning how to bridge gaps in access to care along with patient advocacy is very much the majority of what I do in this nursing role.
Due to COVID, I have actually not been able to meet most of the individuals that I serve in person, and look forward to getting face-to-face time with them in the future. I hope to provide them with more direct nursing care, which they haven't been able to receive due to the public health guidelines relating to the pandemic.
Liane is being generously mentored by another nurse, Caroline Manzanares, who recently re-joined the agency’s Adult Services Department. Department Director Nanette Martinez explains that Caroline “has years of experience with State Waiver supported programs such as ours, and has worked with the State in different capacities, most recently with Incident Management Bureau.”