Duke Stars
Julia Alliger -- Nurse Clinician, Inpatient Care Facility, Duke HomeCare and Hospice
"This is a place where you can always find your niche because it's so big. I'm just glad I've been a part of this system."
The way Duke has followed Julia Alliger and her nursing career may have led her to think
she had a unique shadow.
"I've been a part of the Duke system in one way
or another since 1980," Alliger said. "This is a place
where you can always find your niche because it's so
big. I'm just glad I've been a part of this system. Even
when I've tried to get away, somehow I come back."
In 1980, Alliger began working part-time in
the emergency department at Duke University
Hospital. She left two years later for a full-time
position in the emergency department at Durham
Regional Hospital, which became part of the Duke
University Health System in 1998.
However, Alliger had moved on earlier, in 1992, to apply her nursing skills in hospice and infusion care,
where medication is administered in a patient's home. She worked for a couple of organizations, which were
combined with other groups in 2002 to become part of what is now Duke HomeCare and Hospice.
"Every entity I've worked with has ended
up a part of the Duke system," Alliger said.
Currently, Alliger is a staff nurse at the
Hillsborough Inpatient Care Facility, its windows
overlooking rolling hills and serene countryside.
Today, the expansive Duke system offers nurses like Alliger many career opportunities,
from pre-natal to hospice care to everything in between. For 30 years, Alliger has helped
care for the body as a nurse, and recently she took advantage of Duke's educational
opportunities to pursue a second career in the ministry to care for the soul, too.
In 1999, she began working toward a master's in divinity from Duke Divinity School.
Alliger said she could not have done it without tuition assistance from Duke and flexible
work hours.
"For me, nursing and ministry were a natural overlap because both are about
providing care," said Alliger, who has served as pastor of Eno United Methodist Church
in Hillsborough since 2004.
Alliger said she applies what she's learned as a nurse to her ministry and what she's
learned as a pastor to her nursing.
"Nursing is very much about healing, and it has always had a spiritual aspect for me," she
said. "I've always been interested in healing more than people's bodies, but also their souls."
When she's not tending to her congregation, Alliger said she enjoys the peaceful
surroundings of the hospice, where she provides total care to patients who are near the
end of their lives, including cooking and cleaning for them.
"We focus on making the patients as comfortable as possible and providing them with
the best quality of life possible," Alliger said. "People think it's very depressing work, but
it's not.We get to witness wonderful love and reconciliations between patients and their
families.When people are in crisis or dying, there's nothing superficial — it gets down to
what's really important."
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