“Nursing is an incredible profession,” she says. “It offers so many possibilities.”
Yano-Ino (formerly Yano-Fong) received her nursing training at UCSF, where she learned to think creatively, communicate clearly, and take on leadership roles. She joined UCSF’s nursing staff and within two years moved from bedside care into nursing management. She proceeded to take on other roles, including patient relations and clinical research.
It’s valuable for people, even just family and friends, to know someone who understands how to navigate through it. As a nurse, you never stop being a patient advocate.
“UCSF always provided new opportunities, so I never got bored,” she says. In 1988, when her son Andrew was born, she and another new mother, Susan Alves-Rankin, RN, MS ’87 (now manager of service excellence), proposed UCSF’s very first job share, becoming codirectors of patient relations. They set an expert example of balancing their professional and personal lives.
When the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) passed in 1996, it ushered in a new era of patient protections. A few years later, then-Chancellor J. Michael Bishop, MD, tapped Yano-Ino’s experience and wisdom, appointing her UCSF’s inaugural chief privacy officer. Her role was to translate complex regulations into simple yet meaningful rules for staff, work she found engaging for more than 16 years, until her retirement last July.
That same month, she married John Ino, DDS, a volunteer UCSF faculty member who also teaches bioethics in Japan part time, so the two fly back and forth frequently. She also enjoys volunteering at health fairs and, although she no longer has a formal role in health care, she says, “Once a nurse, always a nurse.”
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