Wendy Hollis, cont'd

Interviewer: How come there are less people going into the field if indeed we need more nurses and paid professionals to take care of this aging population?

Well, I think there's several factors. The biggest factor is the fact that nursing has been a woman's profession over the years. In this country, anyway. Women at one point had a choice of becoming a mother, a teacher, or a nurse. They were pretty limited. Today's woman can do whatever she wants. And we're seeing that in California with all these computer companies, all these different places have sprung up.

The new President of Xerox is a woman, and just as men are attracted to money and power, so are women. So you've got many women who would have gone into nursing, now going into other professions and that's going to keep on happening until we make nursing a more attractive profession to those women and to the men that we need in nursing. Right now only about 15-17% of nurses are male. We need a lot more.

Interviewer: What do you say to the 38-year-old nurse who not only is a wonderful human being but has 15 years of frontline experience and is tired? Who's tired of not getting the respect, who's tired of being yelled at by families, or dismissed by Doctors and wants to leave the field. What do you say to that person?

I don't know how much I could say to that person. It may be too late to say a lot to that person. I can give them the rationale for what's happened, I can give them excuses. What I need to do as an educator is teach my students who come to our program what they need to do to be respected. And at the same time speak with the people in the healthcare industry, which is what educators are trying to do to. And say, "Look, nurses need respect, nurses need adequate compensation, nurses really need to know that you care when they do a good job."

I think more nurses are concerned for getting, for having what they do acknowledged. It's not just a money thing. In other words, they really need to have people value what they do and that's been a very real problem. There's being tremendous attention paid to the medical profession and very little positive attention to the nursing profession. And it's changing, but it's taking a long time. Longer than it should. Nurses need to know that they are respected and valued.

Interviewer: What does the phrase "caregiving" mean to you?

Caregiving means using the education and talent that I have to give assistance to other people. To help adapt to the highest level of function which they can be.

Interviewer: And what does the phrase "and thou shalt honor" mean to you?

"Thou shalt honor," to me, means as we get older, as people get older they should continue to be valued. Not just for what they have done, but for what they are now able to give, because of the learning that they have achieved over the years. And that the old American needs to be respected and really, really congratulated for the things they have done, and therefore, they need to be cherished and taken care of. We're not terribly good at taking care of our older people in this country, are we?

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