Honey Lake Hospice announces scholarship winner

Kaley Cuthill was awarded the Honey Lake Hospice scholarship.

Honey Lake Hospice is pleased to announce the recipient of the Marge Dunlavy Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded annually to the most deserving applicant who is pursuing a degree in a health-related field with a special interest in gerontology, oncology or hospice and palliative care.

This year’s $1,500 award goes to Kaely Cuthill who grew up in Lassen County. She is currently completing her fourth semester in the nursing program at Western Nevada College while working as a heart monitor technician and as a nurse apprentice in the ICU at Carson Tahoe Hospital.

Cuthill was a teenager when her mother died from cancer. It was then that she experienced firsthand the role of hospice care not only for her mother but for family and loved ones, as well. Ultimately this experience spurred her to pursue an associate of science in Nursing after first working in wildland firefighting and law enforcement, especially as a 911 emergency dispatcher.

With the goal of becoming a flight nurse, then a nurse practitioner, she will begin a bachelor’s program this summer to complete her bachelor of science in nursing.

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 “What draws me to this field in nursing is the entirety and complexity that is involved,” Cuthill said. “A huge part of critical care nursing includes death. Increasing my knowledge and experience in the fields of hospice, oncology, gerontology and palliative care, will only help me be a better critical-care nurse and a better human overall. A major part of critical care is also caring for that patient’s loved ones. Incorporating family and loved ones into the entire process of care as well as death is something that I feel passionate about and through my own experience know is so important.”

Honey Lake Hospice is an all-volunteer organization that has been providing services to our community since 2004. It is dedicated to offering end-of-life support with a program of flexible services providing compassionate and supportive care in the setting of the patient’s choosing

For more information about Honey Lake Hospice and the services available, call 257-3137.