How Towne Kids nurse Myra Calatan found her path to pediatric home care in the U.S.
When Myra Calatan first saw the advertisement on Facebook, she thought there had to be a catch.
At the time, Calatan was living in the Philippines and working for an insurance company. She was trained as a nurse, and she was still using her clinical knowledge every day, but her job was administrative: reviewing paperwork, applying her nursing background from behind a desk, and wondering whether there might be a more direct way to practice the profession she had chosen.
Then the Towne Kids posts began appearing in her feed. The New Jersey pediatric home care provider was recruiting nurses from the Philippines, offering visa sponsorship, paid expenses, training and a pathway to work in the U.S.
“It seemed too good to be true,” she recalled, adding that relocating to the U.S. to work as a nurse is usually expensive and costly. “They were offering an immigrant visa and paid all of the expenses.”
She qualified for the job, as she’d passed the test to become a registered nurse in the U.S. For Calatan, the opportunity represented a chance to build a career in pediatric care, and to create a future that once felt distant while she was doing insurance paperwork in the Philippines.
Calatan began speaking with Towne Kids in 2020, but like many international plans at the time, the process was slowed by the pandemic. By 2023, she had arrived in New Jersey and was beginning the next chapter of her nursing career in a new country, a new health care system and a new kind of nursing environment.
Towne Kids met her at the airport, provided temporary housing and provided mentors who had been through the same experience.
Towne Kids brings nurses to the U.S. to care for children with complex medical needs in the place families most want them to be: at home. The company’s model is built around the belief that children with acute or chronic conditions often heal best in the familiar environment of family, supported by nurses who can deliver expert care outside the hospital.
Calatan has spent more than three years caring for the same patient, a relationship that she said has become both clinically and personally rewarding. In the home, she said, nurses often become part of the family’s daily life. They are there for routines and
responsibilities, but also for birthdays, holidays, a birth, and the death of a family pet. That closeness is one of the things that has made the work meaningful to her.
After completing her initial three-year commitment, Calatan chose to remain with Towne Kids. The decision reflected both the professional opportunity she had found and the sense of stability she had built in New Jersey.
Calatan said coming to the U.S. to work has provided career opportunities she wouldn’t have had in the Philippines, and she said she is able to earn more money. She said she has been able to financially support family members and build a house for her mother.
Calatan’s experience also reflects the broader promise that draws many international nurses to pediatric home care: the opportunity to practice hands-on nursing, to support families in a deeply personal setting and to grow professionally in a health care environment where skilled nurses are essential.
