Profile
Robin White - Coming Full Circle
By Joan Tupponce

“I love being able to take a family that is scared and in denial and provide
that extra touch, that extra compassion, the teaching that helps them
come to terms and deal with what they are facing.”
Robin White, RN - Riverside Tappahannock Hospice

ROBIN WHITE

Ever since she can remember, Robin White wanted to be either a teacher or a nurse. Married shortly after graduating from high school, White put her career on hold to first raise her family. It wasn’t until she lost her infant son to SIDS 19 years ago that she thought about those childhood goals.

“The nurses were so wonderful and so caring,” White recalls. “They made a difficult time easier. It was then that I decided to go into nursing.”

White began working at Riverside Walter Reed Hospital in Gloucester after receiving an associate’s degree in nursing from Thomas Nelson Community College in 1992. She worked in the medical/surgical unit for a year-and-a-half before becoming a staff visiting nurse for Riverside’s Home Health division.

“Our job was to provide intermittent care to people who had come out of the hospital and needed some extra care,” she explains. “We would monitor them and help educate them about keeping safe at home and being compliant with their medications.”

White was happy in her new role. “I appreciate and respect floor nurses tremendously but I loved the autonomy and the time I spent with patients and their families when I was doing home health,” she says.

After two years, White became the care manager for the Personal Care/Private Duty department at Riverside. She also supervised the aides who worked with patients in their homes. When the department was closed four years later, Riverside gave White the option of either working with the infusion team or going into hospice. She chose hospice.

“I had come full circle. My son’s death is what brought me to nursing,” White explains. “There is a common bond of grief that you share when you have gone through the death of a loved one. I thought about what I had read in the Bible about comforting others with the same comfort you were comforted. That’s always been my goal.”

White worked for Riverside Walter Reed Hospice before moving to Riverside Regional Hospice in Newport News a year later. When the company opened Riverside Tappahannock Hospice, they asked her to help out at the new facility for a few days.

“After I was there, I said, ‘I really like it here. I could work here,’” White recalls. “They said, ‘okay, you’re hired.’”

It was the rural nature of the area that attracted White to Tappahannock. “There are no strangers here, just people you haven’t met yet,” she says. “You go into these people’s homes and you become part of the family. Everybody knows everybody here.”

Physicians who work in rural areas are more laid back, she adds. “It’s a whole different culture. I remember when I first worked up here and had to call a physician for a patient at 2 a.m. He actually thanked me for calling him.”

As Nurse Manager, White is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the hospice department, including nurses, aides, scheduling guidelines and patient care. White also makes visits to patients and touches base with their families.

“I’m a jack of all trades,” she says. “One of my responsibilities is employee morale. We have high stress. Our nurses deal with a lot of difficult emotions. We have to support each other.”

The 42-year-old can’t imagine working anywhere else. “I love being able to take a family that is scared and in denial and provide that extra touch, that extra compassion, the teaching that helps them come to terms and deal with what they are facing,” White explains. “I want the patient to have a good death, one of acceptance and peace.”

White’s patients have taught her a great deal. She recounts a conversation she had with one patient’s family member. The patient was having difficulty swallowing and was going in and out of consciousness. He loved Lifesavers candies and was given one by a family member who was concerned about his choking on it. White kept checking with him, asking him to show her the Lifesaver. Finally he spat it out across the room saying, “You want it. Go get it.”

“It reminds me that even though our patients are dying, they are still human beings,” White says. “They haven’t changed who they are. It’s moments like that, sometimes humorous, that we find meaning in life and death.”

Another patient called her at 2 a.m. when she was working in home health. White grimaced at the thought of leaving her home in the middle of the night. “I knew that it was something we had dealt with for two or three days and that it wasn’t anything [serious], but I went out anyway,” she says.

When she arrived, she realized the patient was scared. He wanted to talk with her about death and dying. “After more than an hour I walked away saying ‘God, I am humbled once again.’ I learned it’s not just about the physical. It’s also about the spiritual.”