Silvano DiMonte, RN
About Becoming a Leonard A. Lauder Fellow
Where He’s Coming From
DiMonte is from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, but his career as a psychiatric nurse has taken him to New York and Washington DC—and now Philadelphia to focus on his masters education and take advantage of all the opportunities that Penn Nursing has to offer. He was taught to “lead with heart and true compassion” by his mother, he says, who moved from Italy to the United States when she was a nine-year-old girl. He notes, “While she always wanted to become a nurse, she never had the opportunity to make that wish a reality. Still, in her day-to-day life, she is one of the strongest caretakers I know and always stands proud of who I am.”
Being An Ally
Being a health care advocate for young people living in underserved areas is the reason DiMonte entered the nursing profession—prior to receiving his BSN, he spent several years a health educator at a social services nonprofit that offered mental health counseling and primary care to that particular population. He says, “I learned first-hand how powerful and healing a supportive ally and a safe space could be.” His work has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated—many past patients remember him fondly. He says, “There is no better feeling than receiving cards from former patients, at times years after the fact, to say how much you truly helped them, and that they still hold some therapeutic insight or coping skill you taught them close to their hearts.”
Making The Connection
One of the undergraduate clinical instructors in the nursing school that DiMonte attended once told he and his classmates that “nursing is your blood, my sweat, but our tears,” a thought that has stayed with him. He says, “I firmly believe this speaks to the unique ability of nurses to connect, offering hope and healing in some of the most intimate moments in a person’s life, and that we should always honor that unique position in our day to day practices.”
Prior to becoming a registered nurse, I worked for several years as a health educator at a social services nonprofit that offered mental health counseling and primary care to young people from some of the most underserved urban areas in New York City. I entered nursing for the explicit reason of becoming a healthcare advocate for this very population, learning firsthand how powerful and healing a supportive ally and a safe space could be.
