Fifty nurses over fifty: Prominent themes within the work histories of persistently employed women

This dissertation provides a description of persistent nurse workers as well as identifies pertinent themes for those concerned about attracting and retaining nurses and those interested in women\u27s work patterns and career decision making. The design of this historically based sociological study was exploratory, descriptive, and retrospective in nature and used in-depth formal, semi-structured interviews to obtain work histories of fifty nurses who entered school and graduated between 1948 and 1963 and were out of work no more than five years. Data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. One theme found is the unplanned nature of nurses\u27 careers. Careers ebbed and flowed buffeted by life events. Career, while seen as important, was often secondary to family concerns. Nevertheless, these women maintained a persistent fidelity to employment as a nurse, voicing strong identity with nursing and allegiance to its values, a second thread in the testimony. A third underlying theme relates to the need to do, a sense of seeing accomplishment through activity or work. While these themes span all stages of the nurses\u27 work lives, they are expressed more prominently at different times: the need to do at the beginning when they made the decision about what to do; the unplanned nature of their work lives during the middle years, especially in the way decisions were made about choosing jobs; and fidelity or commitment to nursing in their later years as the women sum up their work experience and begin to make the transition to retirement. These women also related a more complex story with regard to motivation to become a nurse and job turnover than presented in journals of the time. While sharing many of the characteristics identified by earlier sociologic studies, they were more concerned about the integrity of nursing than nurses in the 1950s. They held the belief that they have a moral obligation to deliver quality care and this moral imperative also extends to the standard by which the nurse operates. Most valued doing the best that they could do. The vehemence of their expression seems to indicate a culture of commitment within the group