UCI nursing school graduate changed over from a finance career after meeting the man his blood donation helped save

As a regular blood donor since high school, Ryan Ha had always known his act of community service had the potential to save lives.

Ha then met a man who received a transfusion of his blood after a near deadly motorcycle accident.

The meeting was such a life-altering experience for Ha, it inspired him to alter his career path from finance to nursing.

On Saturday, June 15, Ha, 27, celebrated receiving his master’s degree in nursing science during the graduation ceremony for UC Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing.

Ha was in the first class to graduate from the two-year-old program, where his focus was community and population health nursing.

Shortly after earning an undergraduate degree in geography from UCLA, Ha went to work for a financial advisement firm in Century City.

While at UCLA, Ha had donated blood at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. In 2015, he received an invitation from the medical center to meet the man injured in the motorcycle accident who was helped by his blood donation, along with the blood of dozens of other donors.

Brandon Levine’s aorta, the body’s main artery, had been severed in the punishment his body took in the accident. He needed more than 200 units of blood.

“It amazes me to think that a part of all of you is inside of me,” Levine says in a video of his meeting with Ha and other donors that is posted on the UCLA School of Medicine website. “That’s the reason why I’m standing here today.”

Ha said he watched Levine smiling and laughing and hugging loved ones.

“He looked like a completely normal guy after that horrific accident,” Ha said. “It was a pretty inspirational moment. Helping people out in that capacity was something I wanted to  involve myself in. I wanted to have that event relived over and over again … me contributing to someone’s well being.”

Almost immediately, Ha was drawn nursing, seeing their role in Levine’s long recovery.

“Throughout the entire time, there were nurses there with him focusing not only on his physical health, but on his social health and emotional health as well,” Ha said.

“I thought their job was just about giving out medications,” he said. “But there is more than that. It’s them being there by his side and making sure he was emotionally healthy, as well and resilient enough to get through the process.”

Ha’s mind was made up, but he had work to do before enrolling in the UCI nursing program.

He took classes at four community colleges over an 18-month period to complete his prerequisites and became certified as an EMT, getting a job at the Trauma Center at Long Beach Medical Center.

“I was commuting pretty much everywhere,” he said. “My schedule, to say the least, was hectic.”

Never losing site of why he started down that path kept him going, he said.

Ha applied to the new nursing science program at UCI, landing on the wait list before being accepted in March 2017.

At UCI, Ha appreciated the community and population health nursing program’s holistic model, which focused not only on physiological problems, but also on psychological and emotional issues as well.

“He is able to connect physical and mental health with the intersection of social norms, which allows him to see the patient or population group from a holistic view,” said Sara Brown, one of Ha’s professors for the Vulnerable Populations and Homelessness, Maternal-Child Health and Community Health courses. “He is a critical thinker, making him astute to changes in the patient condition and anticipating needs.”

Now, Ha is lining up job interviews. He wants to work in a hospital’s intensive care unit.

By his own acknowledgment, Ha is “a notoriously private guy.” He doesn’t use social media.

Agreeing to be profiled in a newspaper story is “quite out of my comfort zone,” Ha said.

But Ha said he was willing to put himself out there to tell his story, hoping it will inspire others to pursue altruistic endeavors as well.

“I want people to know that there are people who do good,” he said. “I hope this story will motivate people to help the community as well.”