A Return to Ireland

Nurse and Population Health Care Manager Joan Oliver says Duke helped her when she needed it most

A collage of photos shows a woman smiling next to an older woman wearing a knit cap on the left; a bouquet of flowers resting on a patch of grass in the middle; and a cemetery overlooking a body of water on the right.
Joan Oliver, left with her mother, Peggy McIntyre, says Duke’s benefits provided time to care for her mom when she was ill, and time off to travel to McIntyre’s birthplace in Ireland, center and right, to distribute her ashes in May 2024. Photos courtesy of Joan Oliver.

While in the small island village in Ireland where her family traces its lineage to, Joan Oliver considered how everything since she started working as a nurse at Duke led her to that place at that moment
in May 2024.

That was where Oliver would lay her mother, Peggy McIntyre, to rest after years spent caring for her, supported by the flexibility from her remote work schedule at Duke and grounded by her education from Duke Divinity School.

“Duke, to me, provides everything that you need to be successful in your life,” said Oliver, Population Health Care Manager at Duke. “You just have to figure out what you want and then use the resources to get to where you need to be.”

For Oliver, the greatest need came in early 2020 when her mother, then 85, suffered a stroke. McIntyre recovered physically, but she suffered from expressive aphasia. She could comprehend conversations and the world around her, but she had difficulty expressing herself verbally.

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“Being the nurse, I knew everyone was thinking, ‘What are you going to do to help your mother?’” Oliver said.

Oliver moved her mother into her Durham home shortly after the stroke. Oliver had been working in Clinical Documentation Integrity for the Patient Revenue Management Organization since 2016. Along with her nursing training, a fully remote schedule allowed her to more easily balance caring for her mother’s needs.

It wasn’t long, however, before Oliver yearned for connection and introspection away from the burden of caregiving. Duke Divinity School’s certificate, “Theology, Medicine and Culture,” was a perfect outlet.

“Duke gave me the opportunity to occupy my mind in the evening,” said Oliver, who used Duke’s Employee Tuition Assistance Program to pay for the majority of her eduction. “I think it added a deeper element for me to be reflective, and it opened up another way of me looking at things by bringing the Bible into it.”

Oliver’s son, Darry, offered help, too. Beginning in October 2021, Darry Oliver moved his grandmother into his apartment and cared for her until her death last year.

“We had a really excellent mental connection,” Darry Oliver said. “It was almost like we were married at the mind.”

That connection led to Darry Oliver suggesting that they scatter McIntyre’s ashes near her family home in Achill Island, Ireland.

This May, Joan Oliver found herself at a cemetery near St. Patrick’s Church close to the home where her grandfather once lived. There, she distributed her mother’s ashes among her relatives’ graves and was grateful that Duke’s time off policies provided the flexibility for the trip.

“The biggest thing for me is really paying attention to the synchronicities that occur in life, about how, when I reflect back, everything was provided to me at the exact moment it needed to be provided to me,” Oliver said.

Another example awaited her when she returned home: Oliver was beginning a new position in Population Health Management and after years of dreaming of it, her son now is employed by Duke, too. 

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