Many of my nursing school classmates are retiring. A few said they were “done” with nursing and health care and with working, and stopped as soon as they were able to afford not working. They keep busy traveling, babysitting grandchildren, or just taking it easy. Some are trying their hand at something totally different—becoming a docent in a museum, for example, or taking courses to be a travel agent.

Keeping a connection to nursing.

Retired nurse Diane McCarthy volunteers in the neonatal ICU at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus. Millennial nurses such as Erin Bergmann (left) say they benefit from having more experienced nurses like McCarthy on the unit. Photo by Kyle Robertson.

Most people I know, however, still want to keep a connection with nursing and have transitioned into part-time or consulting roles. After fulfilling and demanding careers, many older nurses still have a lot to offer and are not ready to completely retire from nursing. As one colleague has aptly termed it, “preferment”—doing what you prefer, when you prefer, and with whom you prefer—and not retirement may be the answer.

In the August issue, authors Ellen Elpern and Joanne Disch write about a hospital program that utilizes retired nurse volunteers to complement existing hospital staff. In “Retired Nurse Volunteers,” they describe how retired nurses can use their expertise and experience in a variety of ways—mentoring and teaching, of course, but also in other creative but essential areas.

Making use of retirees’ extensive expertise and experience.

They encourage hospitals to develop a “retired nurse volunteer corps,” to plan how and in what areas these volunteers can help, how to qualify them, and what institutional policies and processes are needed to recruit and maintain such a cadre of resources. 

It’s a worthy idea—and surprising, I think, that more hospitals have not already instituted such programs. With more than 70,000 nurses retiring annually by the end of this decade, Elpern and Disch note (quoting Peter Buerhaus), that hospitals will face “not only a shortage of manpower, but a considerable loss of ‘knowledge, skill, experience, and judgement, all attributes that contribute to the successful clinical and administrative operations of complex health care delivery systems.'”

(The article will be free to read for the month.)