[rpv_rn]

I posted this on Success Stories in Nursing. I'd like to transfer here because of several posts regarding age and the nursing profession.
Words of encouragement for those thinking about the nursing profession and wondering if they're "too old." I have only posted the paragraphs pertaining to the health care profession.


With retiring boomers expected to cause a shortage of skilled staff, employers are making it easier for them to stay. Here are five sectors where employers are eager for experienced workers.

Excerpt from MSN Money article
Link:http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...dLovingIt.aspx

Keeping nurses on the job is imperative. Because it's such physically demanding work, a number of hospitals have begun to install mechanical lifting devices to help nurses move patients. To help fill the 200,000 nursing jobs projected to be open by 2010, nursing schools nationwide are creating accelerated programs that award degrees in 12 to 18 months for professionals who hold a bachelor's degree in another field.

RR, a 54-year-old former marketing executive with a degree in economics, is taking advantage of such a program at Case Western Reserve University. R was always interested in health care and decided to change careers after caring for his wife while she was ill with breast cancer for six years. She died in 1999. R, who became an RN in January, is on his way to a doctorate in nursing. He says he finds the work "very fulfilling, intellectually challenging and stimulating."

MF is a career changer who is benefiting from an in-hospital training program at Yale New Haven Hospital (No. 5 on AARP's survey). F, 51, laid off from her flight attendant job in 2003, entered an accelerated nursing program in Bridgeport, Conn. She graduated in May and was immediately hired into Yale New Haven's nine-month training program for operating room nurses. "I am being paid a full-time salary while they train me," she says.