Family practice
Brevard residents Nancy McMullen and her daughter, Jennifer Konowitz, both work at Orlando Health Sebastian River Hospital, just south of the Brevard County line. ORLANDO HEALTH
Even after 54 years in the nursing field, McMullen looks forward to going to work. TOM WILBY
Healthcare is a demanding and sometimes heartbreaking field. Yet, for a few special families, the desire to help transcends the challenges — generation after generation.
Earlier this year, at Orlando Health Melbourne Hospital, vascular surgeon Dr. Joseph Wasselle Sr., worked with his son, Dr. Joseph Wasselle Jr., as the two performed the first endovascular aneurysm repair to be conducted at an Orlando Health catheterization lab. The cutting-edge procedure relies on small needle punctures, instead of larger surgical incisions. The technique reduces pain and speeds recovery.
“I grew up watching my dad and the way he cared for patients,” said the younger physician. “To now be here, working alongside him, is incredibly meaningful.”
Nancy McMullen and her daughter, Jennifer Konowitz, both work at Orlando Health Sebastian River Hospital, just south of the Brevard County line. “I would love to have a nursing career as long as my mother’s,” said Konowitz, a nurse practitioner at the hospital’s busy cardiac catheterization lab.
According to Mark Twain, the recipe for a happy career is to “find a job you enjoy doing, then you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” McMullen has lived that advice throughout her 54 years in the field. She graduated from St. Vincent’s School of Nursing in Jacksonville in 1972.
“Of all the careers that were out there at the time, nursing was the most attractive,” she said. “This walk of life is as exciting now as it was then, providing me with such a wonderful feeling of purpose and fulfillment.”
McMullen looks forward to going to work, even though the pace is busy, chaotic and unpredictable at the hospital’s “front door,” aka the emergency department.
“I never dread starting my early morning shift — in fact, I look forward to it,” said the Melbourne resident, who has been a full-time registered nurse in the ER at Orlando Health Sebastian River Hospital for 15 years. While raising a family of four, she was a full-time home health nurse for nearly two decades.
“As they started to leave home for college, I started my ER experience at Shands Live Oak ER — then a sister hospital to my present location,” she explained. “So technically, I’ve been with the same company for 30 years.”
PRIORITIES
Konowitz, a nurse practitioner at Sebastian River Hospital’s cardiac catheterization lab, hopes her career is as long and fruitful as her mother’s. ORLANDO HEALTH
While McMullen did not encourage her children to follow in her footsteps — or those of their father, who was the principal at their K-12 school — she did inspire them to follow their own interests and exposed them to as many different career possibilities as possible. The result was a family steeped in the ethos of service to community. Now, they have careers to show for it.
“As it turned out, we have one national-board certified teacher in Fort Myers; one sergeant with the Tallahassee [Leon County] Sheriff’s Office; one captain with the Jacksonville Fire Department; and one nurse practitioner in the cath lab where I work,” she said. “They all grew up to serve others in different ways.”
McMullen is proud that her daughter works in the same profession and at the same hospital, and always enjoys seeing her — even though some of their meetings are under challenging circumstances.
“When I do see her coming through those ER doors, I know one of our patients must be in serious need of immediate intervention in her specialized department,” she said “Sometimes we share a patient. I can tell her what happened at the very beginning in the ER and, even though we don’t discuss the particulars, she can tell me how the situation turned out in the cath lab. It’s very special to share that with my daughter.”
Like her mom, Konowitz finds great satisfaction in the demanding world of hospital nursing.
“When our patients leave the cath lab, they are generally leaving much better off than when they arrived,” she said. “It’s gratifying to see them leave with a smile, knowing they’ve received stellar care from an excellent team of caring individuals.”
Konowitz joined the hospital team when the catheterization lab opened in 2012. Though she began her professional life in sales and private aviation, she felt pulled toward nursing when she decided to start a family. She had, after all, grown up watching her mother balance nursing and motherhood.
“I remember her laying out our dinners for the weekend, then putting on her white stockings and shoes for work,” Konowitz recalled. “She always found a way to make it work: taking care of her patients and taking care of us.”
Also like her mom, Konowitz is not pressuring her three children to follow in her career path. “I encourage them to follow their hearts in whatever vocation they may choose.”
Patients are delighted when they hear that Konowitz is the daughter of “Miss Nancy,” the nurse who assisted them during those stressful moments in the ER. “They’re always surprised, but for some patients, it means everything to know they were never handed off, they were passed forward,” Konowitz said.
That seamless transition is more than comforting; it’s clinically important.
LEGACY
Earlier this year, vascular surgeons — and father and son — Dr. Joseph Wasselle Sr. and Dr. Joseph Wasselle Jr. performed the first endovascular aneurysm repair ever conducted at an Orlando Health catheterization lab. ORLANDO HEALTH
For vascular surgeon Dr. Joseph Wasselle Sr., who has dedicated his life to serving the community, watching his son continue the legacy is a priceless gift.
“It’s something you can’t put into words,” he said.
When father and son were working together on the EVAR procedure, the older physician found himself in a role reversal that reflects the rapid evolution of medicine.
“Technology and techniques are always advancing,” he said. “In that moment, I was learning from him.
It’s incredible to see the next generation take things even further.”
His son so admired his dad that he went to the same medical school at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He was mentored by some of the same physicians who had trained his father, who heard from his old professors about how well Junior was doing. The son also relied on his father’s experience and expertise, whenever the going got tough during training.
“I was very lucky,” Wasselle Jr. said.
Compassion, presence and caring are the hallmarks of good medicine. For Nancy McMullen and Dr. Joseph Wasselle Sr., it is also serving as role models for their children and continuing the legacy of healing from mother to daughter, father to son.
“There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing your child find their purpose,” Wasselle Sr. said. “And to be able to witness it up close — in the same place where I’ve spent my career — makes it even more special.”
All in the family
Along with Drs. Wasselle Sr. and Jr. in Melbourne, these family groups also work for Orlando Health in Melbourne and Sebastian:
Heidi Rodriguez and husband, Bobby Rodriguez
Skylar Versaggi and daughter, Isabella Versaggi
Rich Egan and daughter, Carlie Egan
Wendy Noble and son, Wyatt Noble
Cathryn Beil and daughter, Miranda Flanagan
Luz Gonzalez and daughter, Luz Guzman Gonzalez
Along with mother and daughter nurses Nancy McMullen and Jennifer Konowitz, these families work at the Sebastian hospital:
Dr. Robert Gabitto and wife, Dr. Meron Kristos
Brian Barker and nephew, Dylan Fairchild, and niece, Kara O’Neill
Maria Sonnenberg
Maria is a prolific writer and proofer for Space Coast Living and an adjunct professor at Florida Institute of Technology’s Nathan M. Bisk College of Business. When not writing, teaching or traveling, she can be found waging a one-woman war against her lawn and futilely attempting to maintain order among the chaos of a pack of extremely clueless wirehair dachshunds and an angst-driven basset hound.
