New nurses ready to fight pandemic in Triangle

Recognizing that licensure exams will take longer to administer during the pandemic because fewer testing sites are open and students will have to take it individually in order to maintain physical distancing, the North Carolina Board of Nursing instituted “graduate registered nurse” status, allowing nursing graduates to go straight to work while waiting to take the exam.

Alina Panchuck said she hopes to ease the burden on exhausted health care workers, especially as the numbers of people infected each day and hospitalized with the virus rises to unprecedented levels.

"We are coming in with a fresh perspective. We are coming with the new set of eyes that are more acute and more aware of everything that’s going on," Panchuck said. "I feel like, currently, a lot of health care workers are struggling because it’s been so much."

"Our graduate nurses know exactly how to give [intramuscular] injections, so we are happy to have them on the frontline," Milner said.

Panchuck will start work in March in the pediatric bone marrow transplant unit at Duke University Hospital. She said her biggest concern is how vulnerable her patients will be.

"The population that I do interact and work with is so sensitive, and even a minor virus can cause so much damage," she said.

Although she’ll be putting her own health at risk, she said her priority is serving her community.

"It scares me more bringing it to work with me than actually bringing it from work to home," she said.

All 72 Wake Tech nursing graduates have already landed jobs.