EL CENTRO – Valentine’s Day brought some bookworm joy to the Valley’s first private nursing school this month, filling hearts with warm fuzzy feelings of accomplishment.

Honor Health Sciences (HHS), which saw its first graduating class of students working towards becoming licensed vocational nurses (LVN) on October 6 last year, just had 100% of its first quarter students pass the NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination) testing, bringing their first batch of recent graduates that much closer to entering the health care workforce.

Of the recent 20 graduates, seven tested to pass the board certification between January and February 2024, with the final few of the first seven testing on February 12. Within three days the school was notified that all seven of the students who tested passed the NCLEX, having been given rapid results on February 14. This comes after the school first opened its doors in December 2022, as previously reported by this newspaper.

The remaining 13 graduates are still in the ATI (Assessment Technology Institute) review stage, where students review their full courses of study as in preparation to take the NCLEX.

HHS President Jeffrey Chan administers the ATI review with the graduates in order to prepare them. The review process takes at least three months.

“We are so proud, both Jeffrey and I, and Maria (their teacher) too,” Jaymee Chan, HHS Vice President said, “because we saw when they started how hard it was for them.”

“We had tests literally every day, quizzes and exams,” Jaymee Chan said. “They’d go to school here Monday through Friday. Some of them work Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then go to school again Monday with us.”

Most of the HHS students overcame a handful of the respective obstacles. In addition to the accelerated LVN classes offered at HHS to be completed in one school year, many of their students are mothers who work nighttime or weekend jobs to support their families, some also commuting daily from Mexicali to take their classes, the Chans said.

The months of review, countless hours of study and sometimes sleepless nights from October to presently reaching their testing goals have paid off, HHS students told IVP in an interview on Friday, February 23.

“It was harrrd. Stressful,” El Centro resident and recent HHS graduate Michelle Aguirre said. “I’d study every day for two hours, sometimes three hours. I didn’t go out, I didn’t see my family. No sleep. It was hard.”

Aguirre, who is a single mother of a 16 year old, mused that while it was difficult for her to find time to help her son with his homework because she had her own studying to do, the duo usually compromised by her saying, “We can do (our homework) together.”

Aguirre also worked in assisted living at a local adult day health care center as she was studying at HHS.

“(When I found out I passed) I actually started crying,” Aguirre said, noting they were tears of joy. “I told my son and I went to work that day and told everyone at work that I passed, and everyone was happy.”

Now she wants to find a job working in obstetrics (OB) at Pioneers Memorial Hospital. “I want a challenge, that’s why,” she said. “She’s one of our honors students,” Jeffrey Chan added.

Her HHS ’23 graduating classmate, Tanine Durden, has already moved out of state with family in the Chicago area to try and find work in health care.

Durden, who is originally from the Los Angeles area and was raised in El Centro, is a mother of three who was also working when she was schooling in HHS. Two of her children are twins with autism, she said.

Being one of only two African-American students in HHS’ first class of graduates, Durden said, initially, conducting clinicals were difficult for her because of the mostly-Spanish language barrier serving people in the Imperial Valley, she was able to work past it once they realized she speaks Spanish.

Durden said she felt HHS, and particularly its president’s way of teaching, really prepared her to pass the NCLEX on her first try.

“I told Jeffery I was going to pass the first time; I went in thinking I was going to pass and I prayed,” Durden told IVP via telephone. “I felt like when I got to the test everything on the test was what Jeffrey taught in class, so I felt prepared. I was very excited and nervous, but I felt prepared.”

Durden said her next step is finding work in “a healthy work environment, not just pay” but “somewhere I can grow, learn properly, and gives you proper orientation.” She is looking to work for a year “and then bridge into an RN program.” She ultimately wants to earn a master’s agree, she said.

“What I would say it is so special about (HHS) is the importance they place on family,” Durden said. “(Jeffrey) never makes you feel bad about being a mom first, and that I really appreciate.”

“Everybody was very encouraging, all my classmates … had each other’s backs,” Durden said. “I felt comfortable going to my classmates and asking questions. It’s a very strong bond you have with your nursing school classmates.”

“We just keep them motivated,” Maria Gomez, a fundamentals in nursing and clinicals instructor at HHS, said.

Gomez, who has been a nurse for over a decade and received her training at Imperial Valley College before later working for the Chans in home health and now at HHS as a teacher, said she shares from her personal struggles in life on her road to becoming a nurse to help motivate her students.

“Of course they’re not going to be exactly in your shoes, but it’s something personal you want to transmit to your students, like my mother did for me,” Gomez said, who herself was a teen mother.

It seems that second family-type bond is something that sets Honor Health Sciences apart from other schools.

“Jeffrey really motivated us and pushed us,” Aguirre said. “It’s like a family.”

“I think it’s not only me – it’s every single teacher here, they have that same concern for our students,” Jeffrey Chan said, noting that the HHS staff always consorts with each other to aide in student achievement. “We know them personally; we know what they’re going through, so a lot of time we have one on one discussion. I’m also a guidance counselor, a psychologist…,” he joked.

“You want all of them to succeed but in the end this is a course with an exam, and we have to push them. Even though the motivation is so hard to do, we keep pushing, pushing, pushing, because no one else will. All we can do is push them and pray for them.”

Jaymee Chan said the school will continue to prepare the remainder of their first-year graduates to test in the second and third quarters.

The Chans said they hope local health care facilities will continue to be open to accepting their HHS students for their clinicals, thanking the local hospitals and doctors by name.

“We are nervous for them, we pray for them; they give it their best and God will do the rest,” Jeffrey Chan said. “And we’re happy for them,” he said of their students.

For more information on Honor Health Sciences visit their website at honorhealthsciences.com.