Kathy Reno

There is an interesting article making the email rounds in my circle. Wisdom at Work: The Importance of the Older and Experienced Nurse in the Workplace . I readily agree to the value of the “older and experienced nurse” What I wanted to find out was what they considered “older”. At this point in my life I have been a nurse for thirty years employed fulltime the entire time. Experienced I accept, old is what I wanted defined. Page six of this article “The terms old and older worker continue to be redefined as well. For statistical purposes, older workers are often considered those between the ages of 55 and 64, but the law defines an older worker as anyone 40 or over (40, even my young friends are over 40). The legal definition tallies with a pervasive attitude among many corporate recruiters who consider 40 and up unacceptably old. (unacceptable for what?) Some sources further stratify the group: younger aging worker (ages 45-54), middle aging worker (ages 55-65) and older aging worker (over 65). For the purpose of this paper, the older nurse is considered to be 45 years and up.”

So this paper considers me an older nurse, I prefer “younger aging worker”. This is an interesting point, lets start with the 20-30 year old worker, would they be called “infantile aging worker”?….then maybe “toddler aging workers”. I think I have worked at the VA long enough to appreciate wordy meaningless titles. Of course in the VA these would be IAW, TAW, YAW etc.

But I digress; this article does promote the advantages of the experienced nurse, even at one point referring to us as “sages”. I have had the privilege of working with some sages in my career, but have probably worked with more who can just not afford to retire.

I would like to sum these ramblings up with a lofty thought regarding all this, but I don’t have one, have a good day!

Addendum: I have had this blog written for some time, but I can’t figure out how to link the web address of the article. My brother emailed me instructions, but I still don’t have it. I will try to edit this later when I figure it out. If you really want the web address, contact me and I will get it to you.

The heat wave has hit central Indiana. Up into the 90’s every afternoon, and humidity almost that high. We have had some much needed rain, and everything is nice and green. It is still cooling down into the 60’s at night, which makes it much more bearable.
My brother has been revamping the family web site www.ballfam.net/new and it its looking really nice. I would encourage anyone who has not checked it out to do so. We are hoping to get our mom to write some family history on there, so it is not lost.
Not much happening here. But I hadn’t written in a while so thought I would touch base