Twenty years away from home is a long time to be certain you made the right choice.
Jingle Rolloda Capillanes has made that choice three times over — once when she left Mangaldan, Pangasinan, to work in Saudi Arabia in 2002, again when she renewed that commitment through two decades of service across two countries, and most recently when she stepped into a new role at EHS Um Alquwain Hospital in the UAE at 48, still learning, still leading.
A calling shaped by distance
Nursing, for many Filipinos working abroad, begins as a practical decision. For Jingle, it was both that and something more. “I choose to work outside my home country to pursue higher salaries, better career advancement opportunities, and to give a better future, quality of life for my three children,” she says plainly. No romanticizing. Just a mother doing the math.
Her children — Antonio Roberto Joaquin, 28; Justine Lorie Mae, 25; and Julian Angelo, 13 — are, by her own words, “my inspiration, my everything, my love of my life.” That kind of motivation tends to outlast burnout. It has, so far, for Jingle.
She holds nursing licensure in three countries: the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — a bureaucratic and professional feat that reflects not just ambition but discipline. Over her career, she has worked emergency rooms, critical care units, pediatric wards, medical-surgical floors, and outpatient departments. The breadth is unusual. The consistency is rarer.
The quiet work that earns recognition
Awards have followed her. A DAISY Award in 2021. Nurse Top Performer of the Year in 2022. Employee of the Month, repeatedly. Star of the Month twice — April 2025 and January 2026. And just this month, recognition as a Best Healthcare Rankings 2026 honoree and ENAG Global Award Winner 2026.
But the recognition that arguably matters most came from a patient’s family. Jingle once cared for a patient with vocal difficulties and an eating disorder who was being discharged with a nasogastric tube — a situation fraught with fear for any family. She stayed with them: explaining, reassuring, demonstrating. The patient’s relative later said that Jingle’s “kindness and professionalism made a terrifying experience manageable.”
That line says more than any certificate.
Still building, still showing up
In the UAE, Jingle serves on the EHS Well Being Council and volunteers with the UAE Red Crescent. She is also a clinical preceptor — the nurse newer nurses learn from. One of her student interns recalled feeling “confident, supported, and welcomed while navigating complex care situations.” That is not a coincidence. That is what twenty years of intentional practice looks like in a person.
She is, at 48, not coasting. She is one and a half years into a new institution, in a new emirate, still accumulating experience the hard way — one shift, one patient, one family at a time.
