Intely@Sea is a five-day cruise out of Miami, Florida to the Bahamas, taking place May 9 – 13, 2022 in honor of Nursing Professionals Week! We are so excited to be a part of this celebration. It is going to be a trip to remember! 

Joining us on the cruise will be prominent nursing professionals who are subject matter experts and leaders in the nursing world. Some of them will be teaching courses on board for CEU credits. Each of them will be available to network and share their stories with you! Be sure to read up on each of these pioneers in nursing and follow them on social media as well.

Meet Rebecca Love

Rebecca Love, MSN, RN, FIEL is the Chief Clinical Officer at IntelyCare and the President of SONSIEL. She is a regular guest speaker on podcasts, delivers keynotes at various industry conferences and events, and is a daily advocate for nurses everywhere.

Rebecca volunteers her time on a variety of boards related to furthering nursing innovation, including Johnson & Johnson’s Quickfire Challenges.

Rebecca was the first nurse to deliver a TED Talk and is recognized internationally for her ongoing contributions to changing the healthcare landscape by giving nurses a seat at every table where decisions are being made. 

Q&A

IntelyCare: What will your Intely@Sea course will cover? 

Rebecca: My course is going to cover “Nurse/Life Balance,” with a specific focus on how to achieve your personal and professional aspirations.” 

IntelyCare: What does Nursing Professionals Week mean to you? 

Rebecca: “Throughout my entire nursing career, the idea of “Nurses Week” has always been cause for jokes and laughs at the audacity of what the healthcare system thinks it means to celebrate a nurse. Cold pizza parties, a pen, a banana, nothing but a simple flyer in the hall – each of these gestures has felt like an empty accolade that was performed to make the administration feel good about themselves for doing something to recognize nurses, rather than truly doing anything meaningful for them. 

But this year, the Nursing Professionals Week that we are planning with Intely@Sea will finally mean something to nurses. Intely@Sea is all about recognizing nurses, and saying to them, ‘This week is all about you and doing something extraordinary to replenish, recognize, and amplify your impact and value in healthcare.’ Intely@Sea is all about redefining Nursing Professionals Week to a new standard.” 

IntelyCare: What does education mean to you? 

Rebecca: “Education, or in other words, upskilling, is about mobility, dreams, and aspirations realized, all in an effort to reach your personal and financial goals.” 

IntelyCare: What do you think everyone should understand about what it means to be a nurse? 

Rebecca: “Nursing, in its inception, paved the way for the largest education of women in the world. Because of nursing, today I stand on the shoulders of 200 years of women before me whose only access to formal education was to become a nurse, and that legacy – nursing legacy – is the reason why so many women today are where they are. Nursing is responsible for making strides in women’s equality and access to work. We can never underestimate the power and impact that nursing as a profession has had on transforming opportunities for women, and now men, around the world.” 

IntelyCare: What do you think every nurse should understand about the importance of self-care? 

Rebecca: “There is no ability to care for others as a nurse, if you aren’t able to take time to care for yourself. You are allowed to, and in fact, you NEED to replenish your spirit. It is even better when you get to do it alongside other nursing colleagues.” 

Learn more about Intely@Sea here, and be sure to read about the other nursing leaders and subject matter experts who will be attending.

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More About Rebecca Love

Rebecca started her nursing career on a med-surg unit at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, MA. She then moved into working in the ER, and at the same time went back to school to become a Nurse Practitioner, earning her degree from Northeastern University. As an NP, Rebecca spent time working in cardiology, eldercare, and hospice, but found that her true love for nursing aligned with teaching. She went on to spend seven years teaching at Bunker Hill Community College and loved every minute of it. 

In those same seven years, Rebecca completed clinical work with her students at the VA Hospital in Boston, falling in love with caring for veterans – brave souls who had experienced World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War – as well as the nurses who worked there. Rebecca found that the combination of teaching new nurses and caring for patients was a rewarding combination for her, so she continued practicing as an NP in long-term care and hospice. It was at this time that Rebecca conceived the idea for her first company, HireNurses.com. A hospice patient wanted to find a nurse to stay at home with them so that they wouldn’t have to be in a nursing home. Rebecca met with a group of her recent nursing graduates who were struggling to find jobs at the time and formulated the idea of HireNurses.com as a job board for those seeking nursing care to connect with nursing professionals and hire them as their caregivers. 

Around the same time as she launched HireNurses.com, Rebecca was invited to attend a healthcare hackathon. She says it was this experience that really changed her life. The hackathon taught her more about the business of healthcare than she had ever known, and it inspired another innovative idea – the need for a Nurse Hackathon. 

In the pursuit to start a Nurse Hackathon, Rebecca became the first Director of Nurse Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the country, at her alma mater, Northeastern University. That experience led her to her next venture – founding the international nursing non-profit, SONSIEL, alongside some of her colleagues. 

Rebecca continued to operate HireNurses.com, in addition to working in these other capacities, until she sold the company in 2018. She was then recruited to lead clinical innovation for the healthtech company, OptimizeRX. Around the same time, she received a call from David Coppins, CEO of IntelyCare, saying he had remembered a conversation that he had had with her the previous year, and that their conversation on the future of the work of nursing had lingered with him. David and Rebecca had a long (and frank) discussion on the healthcare industry and how it had long treated nursing professionals simply as a commodity in their business plans. It was through this conversation with David that Rebecca knew she had found a company committed to changing this precedent in healthcare. She joined as Chief Clinical Officer in 2021 with the mission to redesign the future of work for nursing, and a commitment to keeping nurses central to everything that IntelyCare builds.