I whole hearted agree, and happen to be one of these old nurses. However I don't think our value is shared by more than a handful of Nursing scholars and afew of us who are in this age group. I must also add that I , in 30 yrs of nursing, have not known Nursing to heed any warning signs of impending disaster unless it was those of us who had reached that experiental learning phase(old age) and it was directly patient related(ie. that patient heading into CHF) We have always been chanted at by our Supervisors"we don't staff for potential" I had the unfortunant opportunity to interview for a Med/Surg float position at a big medical center in north NJ and was interviewed by the critical care manager/director who the look of disappointment on her face when she first laid eyes on me- I believe it was age related, and hope it was not race related, was too hard not to miss, the interview she couldn't wait to be over, and 1 of her questions haunted me as if her entire reaction to me wasn't enough- She asked me about RRT team's, I was working per deim in a cardiac speciality hospital and had always thought the goal was to ward off trouble before it starts- constant nursing monitoring ,which is now part of the initiative know as TCAB-(Transforming Care At the Bedside) This interviewer did not like that answer of not letting a patient get to a point of an RRT or code. I left the interview and re researched my info on TCAB- This is what bother's me- one of the goal of TCAB is "Zero Med/surg codes" so I have to conclude that the interviewer was just picking and didn't want to hire me - due to my age. I have to question whether alot of these nurse managers really belong in their positions? Whether there needs to first be a tranformation in theories of Nursing management, before there ever can be any appreciation for the experienced nurse- we are treated(especially through the hiring trends) as if we have "No value". What we get from the nursing management is head games. Most of these nurse managers are our age group- this is a disgusting shame, where are their ethics? we get attacked on our jobs by these substandard examples of nusing personna for our computer skills- time stamping, expressing time in military time, the wording of our documentation. I was told many years ago by an old manager who we respected and looked to for advise and guidance-"those that can do -do, thoses who can't lead" maybe before this appreciation of us older nurses takes place, we start demanding our NURSE MANAGERS be required to" know how to do first" before they manage- they are not leaders and not a credit to the profession. They can't be 3 yrs out of school or an LPN-BSN on line program(which if one reads the position postings for Nurse manager requirements and who asks where they get their RN coursework, online BSN programs should be for ones who are already RN's- the assumption being the RN critical thinking skills have been developed) and leap into nursing management because they don't want to do the "dirty work'. They need to first learn the dirty work to at least a proficient level before they jump into managers. Then there is the MBA's who have no nursing or medicine backround who have capitalized on the greed factor- never cut their multi million dollar salaries but cut the number of bedside staff RN's because they didn't want to dip into their own pockets to keep a hospital running competently. We should have kicked these people out years ago. My conclusion is: Nursing will loose out because it will not do some critical house cleaning in management first.

This is a smart blog. I mean it. You have so much knowledge about this issue, and so much passion. You also know how to make people rally behind it, obviously from the responses. Youve got a design here thats not too flashy, but makes a statement as big as what youre saying.
Great job, indeed.
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