• Hometown: Cranston, Rhode Island

A career in medicine was always in Simone’s big plans, but it was the personal connections that nurses make with their patients that led her to choose nursing. She saw it when she was volunteering at Women & Infants Hospital as a high schooler, and now she’s experiencing it firsthand from the appreciation expressed by the patients she’s cared for while at URI.

“Nothing puts a smile on my face more than a patient’s ‘thank you’ at the end of a clinic day,” she said. She’s also been experiencing those close connections with faculty and classmates in a nursing school environment she says “feels like home. The faculty really care about students. They dedicate their time to help us success and start off our careers on the right foot. I’ve never come across a professor here who was unwilling to give as much as was needed,” she said.

Besides the personal attention she gets from her faculty, Simone believes the strong theoretical foundation she gets at URI has led to the best possible clinical experiences. She chose URI over other programs because of the variety of courses, the variety of clinical experiences, and the combination of expert faculty and solid curriculum.

Now, her big idea is to become a Certified Nurse Midwife and offer quality health care in countries that don’t enjoy the quality heath system we have in the United States. “If I can make a difference in someone’s life on the other side of the world, I will have fulfilled my life’s goal.”