Bertha Sepulveda, BSN, RN, had a traditional view of nursing when she went to college. Then, senior year, she made a home visit to a pregnant mother.
“It was like a light bulb went on in my brain,” she recalls. “I said, this is it. This is what I want to do.”
She joined what is now Maricopa Integrated Health System to pursue her passion for community nursing and retired 28 years later as director of ambulatory care.
Today she continues to serve uninsured, underinsured, and poor residents of her community as a volunteer with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul® at her local parish church. She interviews clients and directs them toward social supports—among them food, rent assistance, Medicaid, and employment counseling.
Although the Society does not provide health care in Tempe, Bertha’s nursing observation skills often alert her to clients’ health care needs.
“I look at them from head to toe and if anything looks different, I don’t pry, but I ask, ‘Are you okay?’ Most of the time they open up.”
Why does she volunteer? “I've always loved to help,” she says. “It meets my need of being active, and it keeps me working with the population that I love. It's just the population that I want to serve.”
In addition to remaining active through her church, Sepulveda participates in the Phoenix Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN), which she co-founded in 1991.
In 2014, she received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, but it hasn’t slowed this survivor down. Each year she takes part in PurpleStride, the annual walk to raise money for pancreatic cancer research and treatment. This past April, she helped recruit more than 20 NAHN members and their families, who joined her at the event.
This photo essay was created for the "Encore Performance: Retired Nurses Find Fulfillment Through Volunteering" article developed by Charting Nursing's Future for use by the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action.
Credits:
Captions: Nicole Fauteux Photos: Laura Segall