Mentorship is a program, run by Bethany Everidge, where students are able to have the opportunity of shadowing a professional of an occupation they desire. Senior Laura Donegan has shadowed two experts in hopes to gain experience for her dream to become a nurse practitioner.

Donegan first followed Dr. Holland who is a part of National Spine and Pain. She recently started following nurse Vickie Sullivan at RMH on South Main street. Donegan finds differences and similarities between the two.

“I went from a very specialized place in pain management where you only see people in cases who have chronic pain that mostly can’t be treated with pain medicine, to where you see a lot of people who are like drug addicts searching for drugs, and it’s very different. The work a nurse practitioner does is very broad. You see everyone from flu patients to pain- like back pain- to depression and anxiety. It went from very narrow to very broad. I’m glad I went that way because I got to get used to seeing a very select group in a medical field, to going to a very broad place where you literally see everyone,” Donegan said.

After this experience, Donegan would like to work in the Emergency Department where she will oversee everything.

Donegan has found the mentorship program very helpful in the past year.

“[I joined because] I thought it was a great opportunity to experience what I want to study before I actually spend a lot of money before I go to school,” Donegan said, “It has really given me an outlook on how doctor’s offices actually run. I learned more about the requirements of a medical profession and what it actually is, because it is a lot more of sitting at a computer and charting than being with the patients one on one,” Donegan said.

When Donegan actually does get to interact with patients, she is often asked questions on where she is from and what she is doing there.

“One of our patients that works at Strite’s gave me a doughnut. He said ‘Do you want one’ and I said ‘Yes please’. It was blueberry with cream cheese filling and powdered and I thought ‘Damn this is good’,” Donegan said.

Donegan will be going to Blue Ridge Community for two years and then will transfer over to UVA. After that, she plan on going to graduate school.