The health professional I chose to interview is Becky Revere and she works for hospice as an on-call hospice nurse. She works the evenings Monday through Wednesday and is employed by Riverside Walter Reed Hospice. She received a diploma in nursing from Riverside School of Professional Nursing, and a bachelor’s degree in nursing at ODU. She is currently working on her master’s in nursing education at Liberty University and hopes to graduate in the spring of 2023.

Becky was inspired to go into the field of nursing because she wanted to help others due to her granddad being sick. When she was younger, she found the equipment fascinating and knew she wanted to go to nursing school. She started her career path to her job working med surg at Rappahannock General, then went into their ICU and worked as a nurse for a year. After a year she became their head nurse in ICU, then went to Richmond and took a critical care nurse course and moved to Richmond. She worked in a cardiac telemetry unit at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital and went into the cardiac surgery ICU for 15 years. After that, she went to the outpatient catheterization lab and worked at Henrico Doctors’ for a total of 25 years. Finally, she decided to find a job closer to home and started doing hospice in Williamsburg, Tappahannock, and Gloucester, Virginia. 

Becky’s basic roles and responsibilities include taking care of the whole case load of patients every night, receiving calls from families about symptom control and deaths, checking on patients with emergencies after hours, and monitoring admission and deaths of patients. Her favorite thing about the job is helping families through a crisis, while being supportive and passionate. The most surprising aspect of her career is how much she walks in a day. On average, she walks about 2-3 miles a day. Her body undergoes so much physical exercise. Another surprising aspect of her job is that there are not a lot of lunch breaks, and she rarely gets the chance to use the restroom. The most challenging aspect of her career is balancing family life, making time for her kids and husband, and maintaining the household. The advice she would give to someone entering the health field is that the health care field is very rewarding, and nursing specifically has a variety of options. The advancement of this career is tremendous, and you can do anything you want and can change specialties whenever you want.