After 4 decades in nursing—and first-hand experience with a global pandemic starting in year 39—our Nurse of the Week is done with handovers, aching feet, and N95s (possibly). On May 28, Long Island Jewish Forest Hills Hospital RN Sylvana Fontana Rega donned her scrubs one last time and hung up her stethoscope for good at the end of her shift. (Or did she??)
Her career has been bookended by two pandemics. Rega started as a nurse just as HIV/AIDS began to cast its shadow over the 1980s, and of course, the final chapters of her nursing story have been all about SARS-CoV-2. In the bleak, frightening April of 2020, as Long Island Jewish, like other New York hospitals, struggled to provide care for an ever-growing caseload of Covid patients, Rega herself was infected. She had symptoms, but luckily, her system shook it off quickly, and she was back on the unit caring for patients two weeks later.
Rega’s own bout with Covid certainly pales next to the daily grief and suffering she witnessed at work. “Every room on this floor had Covid,” she recalled to a CBS reporter. When she looks back, the stress and the workload seem to dim in importance, overshadowed by the constant, unending loss of life. “When you see people dying every day, it was… unimaginable,” she says, her voice tightening as she recalls the daily toll.
On the job, of course, there was no time for brooding, and Rega was admired for her dedication and commitment to her patients. Her former co-workers are going to miss her (or will they?) now that she has retired and is preparing to travel this summer for the first time since she was in college.
Having a nursing career spanning four decades has “been a ride,” Rega says with a smile. She has seen remarkable advances in the nursing profession, and sounds rightly proud when she says, “In the beginning we were [just about] following the doctors’ orders—and today, we are part of the team.”
On her final shift, as Rega walked out in her street clothes, the hallways were thronged with co-workers bidding her farewell. They gave her a hearty clap-out, cheered, waved, and adjusted their camera phone angles just so to record the moment for posterity.
To those considering a career in nursing, her advice is simple: “You just gotta do it with your heart!”
So, the farewells have all been made, but does this mean that Rega’s heart is no longer in nursing? Well, after her peregrinations, she expects to return to Long Island Jewish on a part-time basis this fall, so her stethoscope may scarcely have time to collect dust.
See the CBS New York video featuring Sylvana Rega here.
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