Amplifying family-centered, culturally respectful nursing care

Completing a clinical rotation last fall at Maria de los Santos Health Center, the largest provider of primary care services to Latinos in Philadelphia, sparked Melanie Contreras’ interest in someday returning to school to become a family nurse practitioner (FNP). Contreras, a fourth-year undergraduate at Penn Nursing, talked to a lot of FNPs there as she learned about diabetes and cholesterol management.

When counseling patients about dietary changes and health, “It’s really easy to be like, ‘Eat this and this and this,’” Contreras says. But because providers are Latinx themselves and have been in the community for so long, she says, they are sensitive to the cultural importance of certain foods, such as rice and plantains—and approach conversations with patients accordingly. “As simple as diet is, that was really inspiring to see,” Contreras says. “You really have to listen to the patient.”

This is just one example of how Contreras’ experiences at Penn, coupled with her upbringing, have made her passionate about supporting underserved populations and providing compassionate, culturally respectful care.

Inspired to a career in nursing

Contreras grew up in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, with her parents, two older sisters, and grandmother. Her parents immigrated from Peru three decades ago, and most of her family and extended family work in the casinos 15 minutes away in Atlantic City. Contreras worked at restaurants in the casinos during summers in college, an experience that she sees as helpful to her interactions with nursing patients.

Her parents experienced language barriers in health care, which showed Contreras the importance of having tablets or translators available. And at Maria de los Santos, she saw how patients lit up when encountering Spanish-speaking health care providers.

For much of her childhood, Contreras observed her grandmother’s cognitive decline from dementia. A nurse came into her family’s home to help, and even after her grandmother’s death, the nurse still comes to family gatherings. “It’s very sweet to see how these relationships form, especially in the end, like with hospice nurses,” Contreras says.

Her family-centered approach to care also extends to the beginning of life: Contreras has had nieces and nephews from a young age, and as she helped care for them during the COVID pandemic, she had the time to think more deeply about parenting and child development.

Contreras’ experience with hospice nursing exposed her to different types of nursing beyond the hospital setting and inspired her to pursue the profession. She was admitted to Penn through QuestBridge, which provides full scholarships to high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds, and has since mentored other QuestBridge students at Penn.

Connecting with familial heritage

Contreras’ grandmother shaped not only her interest in nursing but also her extracurricular pursuits at Penn. Raised in rural Peru, her grandmother primarily spoke Quechua. But Contreras’ parents were discouraged from using or continuing to learn Quechua due to stigma around the Indigenous Andean language.

“I feel like it’s important to know your roots, and for me it was kind of personal, because I’ve seen that loss of language within my own family,” Contreras says. This inspired her to revitalize Andean Representation, a Penn student group that was founded in 2016 but that had become inactive. She is currently co-chair of the group, which celebrates Andean culture and Indigenous identity.

Contreras is also co-chair of the board of Quechua at Penn, a program through the Penn Language Center focused on teaching Quechua as a foreign language and educating students about Andean culture. The program is the only one in the Ivy League to focus on Quechua in such a capacity.

“Melanie deeply values the sense of community in Quechua at Penn, and she is passionate about deepening her connection to her heritage,” says Jesús Rivera Guzmán, Quechua coordinator and lecturer at Penn. He says she successfully organizes events that increase the visibility of Andean culture and partners with local organizations to expand cultural outreach and engagement. Contreras notes that she is also working to build relationships with Natives at Penn to foster solidarity across Indigenous communities on campus.

Contreras is also minoring in Latin American and Latinx Studies, and she merged her academic interests when she took the Academically Based Community Service course Latinx Communities and the Role of CBOs in Social Change. At a North Philly health clinic, she helped interested patients access their medical chart on their phones.

After graduating, Contreras hopes to work in a hospital for a few years to build clinical experience before returning to school to become a family nurse practitioner, with a focus on helping undeserved and culturally diverse communities, particularly Latinx populations.