Faces of the Valley: Springdale Township nurse, a native of Egypt, forges his own way

Adel Mansour believes everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

Mansour, 50, lives in Springdale Township with his wife, Tracey, and their children, Aleah, Landon and Milana. He is a registered nurse at UPMC St. Margaret in Aspinwall, a job he has had for 17 years.

But the path to where he is now wasn’t traditional.

Mansour was born and raised in Egypt. He completed medical school in Egypt in 1998 but was unable to find a residency match.

He had friends in Western Pennsylvania, an area he had visited only a few times through his travels.

But something about Pittsburgh and the United States stood out to him. He met with St. Margaret’s to see whether he could transfer some of his credits and enroll in nursing school.

He was accepted in the St. Margaret School of Nursing and joined a support group for foreign students completing school in the U.S. He later was hired as a nurse at St. Margaret’s.

Mansour has made the Alle-Kiski Valley his home, having worked as a registered nurse on unit 5A of the hospital for the past 17 years.

“Many people ask me: ‘What made you stay for that long?’ ” he said. “And the answer would be balance, keeping balance.”

Mansour attributes a work-life balance as one of the positives of his job. He said nursing is a stressful occupation.

“In Egypt, there’s a saying that people live to work, they don’t work to live,” he said. “I always thought that we work to help us live and have a happy life, and pay our bills and not the other way around, and not live to work all your life and not have anything. … It’s important to have a balance between your career and your life.”

Medicine was always something that was of interest to him. In high school, he excelled at biology, chemistry and physics, and his mother was a nurse. When Mansour was growing up, his mother used her nursing knowledge to care for him and his brother, he said.

In nursing, he is able to spend more time with patients, as opposed to being a doctor. With his medical school background, he also is able to assist doctors and work with them to best help patients.

“My whole idea of even going to medical school in Egypt, and nursing school here, is to help people live a better, healthier life,” he said.

Working at St. Margaret’s was a natural fit,as compared to bigger hospitals in the area.

“I was familiar with the hospital. I took my clinical there,” he said. “I felt that the culture was good. I was feeling that I’m helping the people that’s in my community.”

And the feeling at St. Margaret’s toward Mansour is reciprocal. Nychole Love, one of Mansour’s supervisors at St. Margaret’s, met Mansour when they were in nursing school. She considered him to be a mentor, as he was very helpful and always teaching her new things.

“He’s a big part of the nurse I’ve become and the practices I value,” she said.

Mansour puts patients first and is a team player, helping wherever he can, Love said.

“He always has a teamwork attitude and a can-do attitude,” she said.

Outside of work, Mansour is a caring father, Love said. He often takes his three children to participate in fun activities.

And he is known throughout the hospital wing for his dad jokes, Love said.

“We call him, ‘Papa Adel,’ ” she said.

It wasn’t difficult for Mansour to shift to nursing, he said. The medical field is more focused on the “disease process,” whereas nursing dials in on a more holistic approach to a patient’s well-being, he said.

As a nurse, he is able to build bonds with his patients. He recalled times where he would be off work and out in the community, and people who were formerly patients would approach him and remember the care he helped to provide them.

“(Nursing) looks at a patient as a human being and not as a disease,” Mansour said. “Every patient is different, although they might have the same problem. But everybody has a … different job, different life, different family situation, and it does affect their well-being. So I always believe that it’s good to know the patient as a human being, as a person, and know how their medical issue affects their whole life.”

When Mansour came to America, he already spoke English, so language wasn’t a barrier. What were learning curves, however, were culinary, weather and cultural differences, he said. Another challenge is the lack of immediate family in the area.

But moving to the United States, he said, was rewarding.

“We are special here in Pittsburgh,” he said. “We’re very welcoming for immigrants and people from other places.”