A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Retirement

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

I am always looking for interesting blog topics. This week in California, I met a critical care nurse working for the Cottage Health System who encouraged me to share her story in this blog and even suggested the title. After a long nursing career and 8 years in a nurse leader role, she knew that she wanted to slow down as she moved toward retirement. But, she was also interested in remaining engaged in the work of her hospital. She made the decision to step down to a part-time clinical nurse resource position. Her experience has been that being freed up from managing staff has given her the opportunity to spend more time with direct care nurses. Her new passion is developing emerging nurse leaders and growing charge nurses. She has been instrumental in establishing a charge and resource nurse council that functions interactively with the nursing leadership team and practice councils. The outcomes achieved by the council in the two years since inception have been remarkable. Her nurse manager and the hospital nursing leadership are ecstatic to have the support of a seasoned leader at the front lines working with staff. Who better than a seasoned leader with organizational knowledge to help staff see that they are empowered and how they can make change.

This is clearly a success story and one that can serve as a best practice as we look for ways to insure smooth succession planning. Three million Baby Boomer turn 65 each year, many of them are nurses. By 2020, more than 50% of the nursing workforce will Generation Y nurses born between 1980 and 2000. Will they be ready to step into leadership and will they want to? These are important questions to which there are no easy answers. At the same time, many Baby Boomer nurse leaders want to stay engaged but need to slow down. Working part-time and being able to use their skills would be an ideal scenario. It requires three key components that were present in the story presented:

A nurse leader who can give up control and step back into a staff nurse role with a willingness to use his/her leadership skills to help improve care at the frontline.
A nurse leader on a unit who is not threatened by having a former leader as part of his/her staff but instead sees the incredible possibilities and additional support for frontline staff.
Leadership in an organization who think outside the box and are willing to create innovative part-time positions that utilize the talents of their staff.

The funny thing that happened to this critical care leader on the way to retirement is that she now feels new energy to finish up her career with purpose. For her – it is a happy place to be and she also gets to play golf. I am sure there are many other nurse leaders out there who could envision themselves in this kind of role and have much to contribute. Sometimes all it takes is a nurse, a nurse leader and an organization who are willing to see the possibilities.