NurseWeek News

Master Pieces
Variety of backgrounds, experiences contributes to the intricate weave of nursing

By Beth Ulrich, Ed.D., RN, South Central Editor
January 31, 2003

When I started working on our new-graduate project last year, I initially had a tendency to describe the project as including "the kids" who are about to graduate. It didn't take long for me to change that statement. Our new-graduate group, I soon discovered, ranged in age from 21 to 60, with an average age of 29. For 10 of our 35 participants, nursing was not their first career and, for several others, entering nursing school followed years in a different type of career-raising a family.

They chose nursing for many reasons. For some, it was a long-term dream they wanted to fulfill. For others, it was seeing nurses in action and realizing that the intrinsic and emotional rewards of nursing far outweighed those of their previous profession. Some were drawn to the job security and benefits that nurses enjoy. A couple were looking for a profession that was more challenging. Clearly, they had all thought long and hard about the decision to enter nursing, and all were in nursing because they wanted to be there.

It is often easy to forget why we each chose nursing. For many nurses having never known another profession, it is also easy to get into a mentality of "the grass is always greener" and fantasize about better money, better hours and less work involved in other professions. Here we have people who have seen the other side of the fence and have chosen nursing. None of the group involved in our project, having been in practice now more than six months, thinks they made the wrong decision.

Certainly, a few have seen some things that are a little different than they expected, but none of them has questioned the choice they made to become nurses. Having more maturity and real-world experience than a person who goes directly from high school to college to job, they appear sometimes to see a more balanced picture and be more willing to work through the problems-attributes that clearly contribute to the good of nursing and the profession as a whole.

They also force us to deal with new graduates in different ways. The stereotype of new graduate equals young, inexperienced person is out the window. The older, more experienced new graduate is less likely to accept what is said at face value and more likely to question the rationales behind actions. Working successfully with colleagues and employees older than you, less experienced in nursing but more experienced in other ways, offers unique challenges. It also brings us back to the need for each generation to understand the values and strengths of other generations.

We now not only have four generations of nurses by age in the workplace, but also several generations of nurses by work experience. Age often no longer can be equated with experience. The mosaic formed of "age generations" and "work experience generations"is complex, but it is also enormously rich with potential.

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