Twenty years is long enough to build an entire life inside a hospital’s fluorescent hum—long enough to arrive as a bedside nurse and leave, eventually, as the person others look to when a shift goes sideways. Gertrude Guray De Guzman has spent exactly that span abroad, and the arc of those two decades reads less like a career ladder than a slow accumulation of the things that make a person indispensable: skill, patience, and the quiet authority that only time earns.
The blueprint came from home
Before the ICU, before Saudi Arabia, before any of it, there were two people in the Philippines who shaped how she would carry herself through all of it.
“I got my perseverance and strength from my late mother, Lorna Delos Reyes Guray, who was a very strong woman,” she shares with TGFM. “She taught me not to give up, even when life becomes difficult.” From her father, Gregorio Guray Jr., came something softer but no less essential—”the value of compassion, kindness, and caring for others.” It’s a fitting inheritance for someone who would spend her life in nursing, where both toughness and tenderness are job requirements.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Our Lady of Fatima University in 2003 and, almost immediately after passing her board exam, left for an ICU post at King Fahad Hofuf Hospital. The decision wasn’t complicated. She wanted a better future for her family and the kind of professional growth that only comes from being thrown into unfamiliar territory. “Working abroad gave me opportunities to develop professionally, become more independent, and provide better opportunities for my family.”
From bedside to leadership
What followed was a steady climb that took her across roles most nurses only pick one of. She returned to Our Lady of Fatima as a clinical instructor, teaching the next wave of nurses, then stepped into a head nurse position at Al Ahly Specialist Medical Center. In 2017 she joined Danat Al Emarat Hospital as a nurse manager in Adult OPD, became a service line manager in 2023, and now serves as Clinical Nurse Lead.
The through-line across every promotion, she says, is people. “I truly enjoy working at Danat Al Emarat because of the people I have worked with for many years.” For a leader, that’s the real measure of the work—not the title, but who rises alongside you. “Seeing people grow and succeed motivates me to continue working hard and giving my best.”
The cost nobody lists in the contract
The rewards of two decades abroad are tangible—a good salary, healthcare, security, the safety she feels in the UAE. But the mother and wife, married to fellow nurse Jayson De Guzman, is candid about the part that never gets easier.
“One of my biggest struggles has been homesickness, especially missing my parents and family in the Philippines,” she admits. “Being away from our loved ones is never easy.” She counts herself fortunate to fly home yearly, sometimes twice, a small mercy that keeps the distance bearable.
Her advice to fellow Filipinos abroad carries the weight of someone who has tested it: “Always remember why you started. Working away from our families is not easy, but every sacrifice has a purpose.” Being an OFW, she says, is about more than money—”it is also about representing our country through our hard work, professionalism, compassion, and integrity.”
Twenty years in, that legacy is already written into everyone she has helped rise.
