A culture of care.
Marlene Barcelona would give you the shirt off of her back if you needed it. That caring spirit is what brought her into the medical field. She grew up in a family of nurses and social workers, where caring for others was a daily part of life. At ECU Health, she has found a place to continue working within a culture of caring.
Good Days and Bad Days
As an assistant nurse manager in the Pediatric ICU, Barcelona deals with heartbreaking circumstances on a daily basis. Bad days can come out of nowhere in the PICU, but the good days keep her going. And Barcelona takes each of these experiences to heart. Helping young patients through those tough situations helps her maintain a continued resolve and strengthened sense of purpose in her job.
“Being Here Feels Like Family”
After beginning her nursing career in Toronto, Barcelona served as a traveling nurse. After a move to Los Angeles to serve at UCLA Medical Center, and a move back to Canada, she followed her brother to North Carolina to serve at ECU Health. Twenty-two years later, she’s Barcelona here. “In LA, I didn’t feel like family,” she recalls. But ECU Health, she says, is different. “The residents here respect you. They respect your knowledge.” After traveling all over North America, Marlene Barcelona has found her family at ECU Health.