Say “registered nurse” and most people picture the same thing: someone at a bedside, checking charts and administering medication. Few imagine that person also setting her sights on a medical degree and a law degree, fronting a band on the side, and drawing her strength from an early, defining loss. That range is worth sitting with in the story of Cristie Ermita.
She is a registered nurse in California, where her days are built around the quiet, unglamorous work of keeping people stable. “I provide direct patient care; monitoring conditions, administering medications, coordinating with healthcare teams, and most importantly, offering compassion to patients during some of their most vulnerable moments,” she says. The first three are technical. The last one is the part she keeps coming back to.
A heart shaped before the uniform
Long before California, there was Brgy. Kalaklan in Olongapo City, and a young woman volunteering as a nurse with the Red Cross under the Emergency Response Unit, working alongside Alpha Team. It was here, in the urgency of emergencies, that the instinct for service hardened into something permanent. “That experience shaped my heart for service, especially during emergencies where quick response and compassion are critical,” she recalls.
That same impulse spilled beyond medicine. In Olongapo she helped with music events and donated sound systems, whiteboards, and other essentials to public schools. The thread running through all of it was simple: use whatever you have to lift someone else.
The strength that came from loss
Adjusting to life in a new country brought loneliness, culture shock, and the ache of distance from everything familiar. But the deeper source of her resilience runs further back. Ermita lost both parents at a young age, and that early grief became, improbably, a foundation. “During difficult times, I leaned heavily on my faith in God, my siblings, and the values my parents instilled in me,” she says. When she felt lost, she returned to a single question: why she started. The answer always carried her forward.
What she loves about the work is the thing that cannot be charted. “Every patient has a story, and being part of their healing process whether physically or emotionally is something I don’t take for granted,” she says. The most fulfilling moments are the smallest ones; comforting a patient, listening, simply being present.
A future that refuses to stay in one lane
Ermita is not content to remain at the bedside. She is pursuing both a Doctor of Medicine and a Juris Doctor, with the aim of serving people medically and legally at once. “My goal is to serve in a way that combines healthcare and advocacy helping people not just medically, but also by protecting their rights,” she explains. Education and youth development in the Philippines remain part of the plan.
Her advice to fellow kababayans abroad is unsentimental and hard-won: be wise with your money, guard your peace, choose your circle carefully, and never love someone more than you love yourself. Above all, hold on to faith.
There is, too, the band. As lead singer of Psycho Chromatic, she has found another language for connection. It reminds her that roots and passions travel with you. For Ermita, the lesson of an unfinished, imperfect journey is steady: everything is a blessing, and the honoring of it is in the giving back.
