Julie O'Neil
February 2022
Julie
O'Neil
,
LPN
Sentara Cardiology Specialists
Sentara Cardiology Specialists Fort Norfolk
Norfolk
,
VA
United States

 

 

 

Julie is steadfast in her devotion to our patients and her job, and my care team could not survive without her.
Since COVID and the merger with Bayview physicians, the EP department has been overwhelmingly understaffed, as is the rest of SCS. There are only two veteran nurses on our EP team covering 7 full-time ablation doctors. Further, we have lost many nurses in the past two years on the EP side for various reasons. This has led to a huge increase in Julie's workload that started when she was asked to take on multiple physicians' schedules and inboxes when other nurses were only in charge of one physician. Each time she was told that help was coming and that this was only temporary. But this time and this help never came until now. We hired and are currently onboarding 4 nurses at the same time, which only adds to Julie's immediate list of responsibilities. Since that initial bump in workload two years ago, she has consistently been overworked. She has remained virtually silent about it, gave back the Fridays that she had off, and put the pedal down to get the work done. She's juggling multiple physicians' workloads, training the new nurses before they start, and then continuing to provide support to them afterward. It would be enough to make most people look for a new job, but she tirelessly pushes onward because she loves her job and our patients. Julie is an all-star and has been a rock at SCS before we were Sentara. She is steadfast in her devotion to our patients and her job, and my care team could not survive without her. I am beyond fortunate to have her, and I am grateful for her knowledge, work ethic, and dedication in the face of what seems like unyielding adversity.