Editor's Note
Generation
RN
Organizations,
nurses of all ages work together to achieve professional
longevity
Beth Ulrich, Ed.D.,
RN, South Central Editor
January
22, 2001
I have
to admit that the topic of our cover story in this issue
– aging nurses – gave me pause. I guess I never
thought that I’d be one of the nurses who would raise the
average age of people in our profession rather than lower
it.
The
average age of nurses is about 45 or 46. It is startling
to many to realize that a huge percentage of our nursing
colleagues have more than 20 years’ experience. In our last
issue, we profiled a nurse who still is in practice at age
78.
Many
lessons can be learned from how these nurses successfully
remain in their careers and continue to contribute to their
patients and the profession.
The
ability to adapt is a major ingredient to achieving a long-term
career. Adaptability starts with knowing what you know and
what you don’t know; knowing what you can physically do
and what you cannot; and knowing what you can directly control
and what you have to work around.
Creativity
often plays an increasingly important role as nurses mature
and have to compensate for bodies that don’t want to move
as fast or lift as much. Watch an older nurse work and you’ll
see creative ways to move patients and equipment with less
effort.
The
ability to prioritize contributes to successful adaptation,
too. As you become more experienced (and older), you learn
to better define what is most important for both the patient
and the nurse. You also better understand what will contribute
most to achieving the desired outcome.
For
hospitals and other health care organizations, the challenge
in helping nurses achieve long-term careers and retaining
an aging nursing population is to create an environment
in which both baby boomer nurses and Generation X nurses
can thrive.
A number
of organizations have added on-site day care and sick care
for children. That meets the needs of many young nurses.
Organizations now need to consider adding adult day care
to assist older nurses who are responsible for their aging
parents.
One
hospital that I worked for in California even had elder
care as well as child care as part of its earthquake disaster
plan because administrators knew that in a disaster, the
older nurses and other staff would be able to stay and care
for patients if they had a safe place to care for their
young and old dependents.
Ergonomic
issues are important for staff of any age, but additional
attention must be given as the staff ages.
We’re
relying more on computers, too. Walk into any nurses’ station
and you’ll probably find chairs with broken or no backs
and computers without wrist pads. Chairs can contribute
to back injuries and the lack of wrist pads to carpal tunnel
syndrome.
Patient-lifting
equipment almost always seems to be inadequate, even though
we know that you can pay for a lot of lifting equipment
by saving the cost of just one injury.
To have
a successful nursing profession, we need the energy and
knowledge of the young nurses as well as the experience
and wisdom of those who have been in practice for many years.
Working together, each group will become stronger. Only
the organizations that meet the needs of both groups will
be successful in the future.
