Pop Star Nurse: Ysabelle Cueva pursues both of her passions

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SALT LAKE CITY —By day, Ysabelle Cuevas is a registered nurse at the Children’s Procedures Center at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital.

“I take care of children getting ready for surgery, recovering from surgery and intra-op,” Cuevas said.

Cuevas said she loves caring for the children and helping to calm them at the hospital.

“Immediately when the kid gets there, you immediately drop everything and get to the bedside and help them,” she said.

But when walking into a room, it’s likely few patients would ever guess Cuevas is a famous pop star. In fact, many of her co-workers don’t even know how famous she is.

Music has been a part of Cuevas’s life for as long as she can remember.

“I grew up in the Philippines. Everybody karaokes in the Philippines,” Cuevas said.

During college, singing cover songs helped her relax after nursing classes. She connected with others on YouTube which gave her a creative outlet.

“I was doing it’s Kpop, it’s BTS. And they’re really big now, but one of them noticed my covers,” Cuevas said.

And that’s when her channel really took off.

Fast forward, she has nearly 3 million followers on YouTube. In 2018, Warner Music in the Philippines signed her, and her Spotify channel, featuring her own original music, gets thousands of hits each day.

She recently relocated to Salt Lake City, where she became a writer and singer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ youth music project, “Strive to Be.”

But at the hospital, Cuevas flies under the radar and says she loves both music and nursing.

“I get to write music, and I still get to do my, my own thing and to work at this cool place,” Cuevas said. “I feel like the best part of it is getting to know people and getting to take care of so many different people. I think it teaches you compassion and humility.”