A Lifetime of Caring, A Calling to Hospice
- njHealth Team
- Nov 19
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 20
Ottilie Parsons always wanted to be a nurse.
It was the perfect professional fit for her demeanor, kindness and intelligence. For 20 years she was happy caring for the patients in the Operating Rooms at Hahnemann, Christiana and AtlantiCare. Tending to both their physical needs and emotional concerns, she made a difference with every hand she held and every interaction, one patient at a time. It was good. She was content and professionally fulfilled. Yet soon she would make a decision that would forever change the trajectory of her career. She would become a hospice nurse.
“It really was a calling, and I don’t know where it came from,” she recalls. “The word hospice repeated in my head. I couldn’t shake it.” Months passed, Parsons continued to care for her patients in the OR recovery room. The first face they often saw after coming out of anesthesia from surgery. Her soft yet convincing voice reassuring them. But the calling to “hospice” in her head continued. She was being guided towards another path.
Even though she was a woman of great spiritual conviction she questioned this beckoning to hospice… was it a message? Until one day she simply called a local hospice to inquire about a job. “Honestly, I just had to do it,” she says. Then something wonderful and surprising happened. Although she had no hospice nursing experience, she was hired.
“To tell the truth, I didn’t know what I was getting into,” but I had to do it. She worked on-call, after hours and traveled around throughout south Jersey. She asked questions, she watched others, and she learned about hospice. It became her passion.
That was over 25 years ago and since that time the Upper Township woman has never looked back. “It was the best thing for me.” As a Regional Clinical Liaison for NJHealth Hospice and Palliative Care Ottilie Parsons, RN, BSN doesn’t provide the physical care to patient as she did in those early days. Instead, she educates the community about hospice, offers reassurance for those facing a terminal diagnosis, and supportive guidance for their families.
“Patients deserve the extra special care that Hospice provides,” she says. “It can quickly improve a difficult situation for patients and families.” The compassion and care she showed to hospital patients in the early years of her career, her kind smile and soothing voice now encouraged those facing the end of life and their families. “I have worked with Ottilie for many years and in addition to her kind heart there is no one who will work more passionately and harder to advocate for our patients and families then Ottilie,” said Suzanne Martinelli, CEO and administrator of NJHealth Hospice and Palliative Care. “It is a privilege to work alongside her.”
“You won’t find, ‘I want to be a hospice nurse,’ written in my high school yearbook,” Parsons says with a smile with emphasis on the word hospice. “But it has been the best and right decision to answer this calling in my life. It has been my honor to assist patients and families navigate through a challenging health care system with as much comfort and peace as possible.”
The call to hospice care became her life’s mission. We are so grateful she answered that call.
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