David Bernard was in information technology at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia. After doing several new-program rollouts, where he’d show hospital staff how to use the new systems, he learned he wanted to teach full-time in the hospital’s education department. But he couldn’t teach at the hospital, he said, unless he happened to be a nurse. He seemed to be out of luck.
So, Bernard went back to school and got a nursing degree.
“I looked at the opportunity,” Bernard said, “and I talked to my wife. We were lucky enough to be at a point in our careers where I could quit to go back to school and become an RN. I hoped they (Henry Mayo) wouldn’t forget about me.”
However, Bernard couldn’t quit. Upon turning in his resignation at Henry Mayo to become a student again, the hospital’s chief technology officer surprised him with an opportunity to work on an as-needed basis that would not only pay him, but also give him the flexibility he needed for his schooling.
“She basically gave me an offer to make a little bit more money than I was making,” he said, “allowing me to leave and go to school whenever I needed to go to school and be there to work on whatever projects they needed me to work on.”
Today, Bernard is 51 years old with a wife and two kids, living in Valencia, and he works in the education department at Henry Mayo, teaching staff members who are new, transitioning or in need of refresher training. It’s been quite the journey up to this point, he said.
Bernard was born in San Diego County, lived in the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley, and his family came to the Santa Clarita Valley when he was in junior high. He graduated from Canyon High School in 1991, and then he joined the United States Marine Corps where he was a microwave communications equipment repair technician.
He’d join the Marines reserves two years later — after his training — and that allowed him to go to college. He started that journey at the University of Maryland.
In 1998, Bernard received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, San Diego. He minored in Latin American history. And while he’s always been fascinated with history, he knew he’d end up in tech.
Sure enough, when he graduated, he went to work for Earthlink. But even there he found he had a knack for teaching.
“The No. 1 reason I love to teach is because I love to learn,” he said. “I just had the ability to train people on technology and things like that, so, I did corporate education. I loved doing corporate education.”
In 2006, Bernard joined Henry Mayo’s information technology department. He’d eventually go on to nursing school between 2013 and 2015, earning his second associate’s degree, and a few years after that, the stars would align for him to take his next step.
“The person in the job I’m in right now, she was retiring,” he said. “I’d implemented a lot of the same technology systems for online education with her. Well, she says, ‘You need to apply for this.’ And so, I’ve been in this role since 2019.”
To work that job, however, Bernard was required to have a master’s degree or be getting one. So, he went back to school again, this time through Grand Canyon University, from which he just received his master’s degree in February 2024.
Bernard took his time with the master’s program, and he enjoyed what he was doing. One of the tasks required was to complete clinical hours where he’d work with hospital patients. This was nothing new to Bernard, but since the world was knee-deep in the pandemic, he, like so many others, had not done regular physicals because, he added, “During COVID, who went to see the doctor?”
But, as with anyone working in a hospital setting, Bernard would have to get a physical and be cleared. So, he did his physical in November 2022, and then he went on vacation, not to return until January.
“We kind of did a family trip overseas for a wedding … It was a vacation of a lifetime,” he said. “When we came back, there was a phone message — three months after that appointment — saying I had abnormal lab values.”
Bernard would learn his blood sugar was extremely high.
“I was getting ready to turn 50, so I’d already gotten a personal trainer,” he said. “But I never cleaned up my diet. My diet was trash. I didn’t sleep for a night. I got really stressed, kind of thinking about the diabetic patients I’ve taken care of, and just how this disease can ravage you.”
Being a nurse, Bernard knew what his blood sugar numbers meant before a doctor had to tell him. He knew he had diabetes. He also knew what he needed to do to manage the disease.
Within three days, he said, he got his numbers down. They weren’t perfect, he admitted, but they were in the safe zones. He’d changed his diet, exercised more, and he was able to avoid having to go on insulin. But these things he’s been doing since learning he was diabetic is what’s worked for him, he said. Not everyone can do the same thing and get the same results because nobody’s the same.
Bernard learned much about diabetes while trying to get his blood sugar levels under control. One factor that affects a person’s blood sugar, which he didn’t previously know, was related to sleep.
“They did a study — it’s kind of a funny study — but they did a study of post-menopausal women,” he said, “where they had a control group — they had them sleep a normal set of hours, at least eight hours every night — and then they had the study group where they actually sleep-deprived them. The reason I say it’s funny is because I don’t know how they sleep-deprived them. But they basically made them sleep less than eight hours a night on average. Every single one of them had some level of insulin resistance, and every single one was in pre-diabetes.”
While learning more about diabetes and managing his own health, Bernard shifted the focus of his studies for his master’s degree on learning more about the self-management of diabetes. In doing that, he came across research on what he called “motivational interviewing” that would ultimately inform his next life steps.
Motivational interviewing, he learned, is a process that helps various types of addicts “connect the dots,” he said. Bernard shared one particular story about a guy he learned about who’d been a lifelong smoker, but who also valued himself as a good father and who’d connect the dots to conquer his addiction.
“One day, he was getting ready to pick up his kids from school, but he’s out of cigarettes,” Bernard said. “It’s also getting ready to rain, and he has this thought in the back of his mind: ‘Well, they’re not going to get that wet. I can just run over to the corner market and get cigarettes.’ That idea was connecting the dots enough for him that he was repulsed. If he’s the kind of father he thinks he is, then smoking has now put him in a situation that’s diametrically opposed to him being the person he values most. He quit smoking that moment.”
The drive behind motivational interviewing, Bernard explained, is to ultimately help people identify their real motivation in life and get them to connect the dots to overcome the dilemmas they face. And so, Bernard began speaking to various groups about diabetes with the goal of doing just that with those who have the disease.
Diana Sevanian, a retired registered nurse who heads up the health and wellness program at the SCV Senior Center at Bella Vida, told The Signal in an email that Bernard has given diabetes lectures at the center, which have received rave reviews and requests to bring him back regularly.
“David has an intense and inspiring passion for helping others to understand health, disease processes, and how to proactively take steps towards living one’s best life at every age,” Sevanian said. “He is so likable, knowledgeable, and he breaks everything down so that no one leaves the room with questions or bewilderment. In fact, they leave empowered.”
Additionally, Bernard just started a diabetes support group at Henry Mayo with meetings every first Monday of the month at the hospital, excluding the first Monday in September since it’s Labor Day. Bernard is excited to get it going.
“Early on in the Marine Corps, teaching kind of fell in my lap,” Bernard said. “People said, ‘You’re good at this.’ And I enjoyed it. In the Marine Corps, I was in charge of company training for the last few years, which basically got Marines prepared for the annual stuff they were required to do, everything from rifle qualifications, pistol qualifications, physical fitness tests and deployment readiness tests. So, I did all of that, and then I ended up doing that at the next job I had at Earthlink.”
Bernard has loved teaching since. Students and colleagues alike said his passion for sharing helpful information is very apparent. During a class earlier this month with about 20 College of the Canyons nursing students at Henry Mayo, he spoke about the importance of high-quality CPR, showed off the “crash cart,” which is a nurse’s toolbox for emergencies, gave each student the opportunity to perform CPR on a CPR mannequin, and he got them to vow to become coaches themselves, making sure others are properly performing high-quality CPR.
According to Debbie Klein, a nursing adjunct faculty member for COC, Bernard goes out of his way to work with COC nursing students.
“This isn’t something that’s required of him to do,” she said. “He does all the paperwork and all the arranging for us to take our students to different floors in the hospital. And if we have any issues, we go through David in education. He’s our middleman.”
Klein said Bernard gives students the opportunity to work with nursing tools, like the crash cart, and that it wasn’t always that way. Through the hospital’s outreach, Bernard is introducing that to COC students and students from other institutions and organizations, as well.
Klein added that her students have always received great value from what Bernard has to share. “He’s enthusiastic. And by him being enthusiastic, it draws the students in around him and they want to learn. He puts a little question out there, or he says, ‘I’m going to show you this, or teach you this.’ And then he does it, and you can just see their little light bulbs going on, and they’re learning from him.”
Another COC instructor who brought her students to Bernard’s class earlier this month at Henry Mayo was Nerissa Yuhico. She said Bernard comes to these classes with a unique way of getting others excited about what they’re learning. Several of those in the class that day echoed Yuhico’s sentiments, saying Bernard is immediately ready to engage, asking questions and getting everyone involved.
“He’s very patient,” said second-year COC nursing student Irene Elias. “He explains things in simple terms, even though we may know the terminology, but he still makes sure it’s clear. And he gives everyone hands-on experience. Usually, it’s like half the people get a chance.”
Second-year nursing COC student Brandon Angeles said that some lectures can be filled with dense information and are difficult to follow, but with Bernard, the material is presented in a much more interesting and engaging way.
Each student who performed CPR on Bernard’s mannequin jumped right in with no hesitation to keep it alive.
“Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother, you’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’, and we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”
Bernard played the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” to keep the class’ chest compressions on the mannequin going, to keep everyone taking turns, and they all kept that “patient” alive.
A little over a decade ago, when Bernard went back to school to get a nursing degree, he’d hoped to one day be able to pass on his passion for a subject to others, to give them the power to make positive changes in the world and to stimulate progress.
“It’s about coming alongside people,” he said. “One of the themes that’s consistent is, how do I take a situation and make it less stressful for them, how do I give them the keys to the kingdom, how do I make them passionate about a subject so that they don’t stop learning at my presentation, but they may learn for the rest of their life? So, I guess in that sense, it’s the desire to get other people passionate about whatever it is we’re talking about or just interested in it.”
Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].
