Call 9-1-1! Our nation is in the throes of a serious health crisis. Her condition is rapidly approaching critical: her economic flow is severely dehydrated; her unemployment rate is hypertensive and her job market is in fibrillation. Even with a trillion-dollar transfusion, apparently it will be a prolonged recovery period for America.

Difficult days are definitely upon us, but sometimes a bitter pill can be good medicine. Tough times have a way of bringing clarity to our lives, rousing us from our complacency and demanding we reinvent ourselves. Reinvent, how? By rethinking our goals, repurposing our skills, and even changing career paths. Yale University School of Nursing Dean and Annie Goodrich Professor Margaret Grey looks optimistically at dealing with our current situation. "We can choose to ‘hunker down' and get through these times, or we can see the good and the opportunity around us." In other words, no matter how gloomy it may look, opportunity is still out there knocking on doors. For those seeking ways to redirect their lives and make an immediate difference in the lives of others, now may be an ideal time to consider a second career in nursing.

For several years, professional authorities like the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) have been reporting nursing shortages in the wake of an aging population, longer life expectancies, and other modern factors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be at least one million new openings for RNs by 2012, not to mention other nursing specialties. The AACN concludes that, in terms of projected job growth, such statistics secure nursing as the nation's top profession. That's a pretty loud knock for anyone wanting to reroute their career path.

YSN Assistant Professor Linda Pellico, MSN, PhD, APRN, has been teaching for 20 of the 35 years since YSN opened its doors to non-nurse college graduates transitioning into nursing. She feels "lucky to be surrounded by the talented, compassionate and experientially gifted students" who enter YSN's three-year Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing (GEPN) program from a wide variety of professional backgrounds. "They are," she notes, "generally highly motivated, self-directed, flexible, educated individuals dedicated to helping people, populations, or systems." Since these students are often new to health care, Pellico believes GEPN must build their new fields of knowledge while supporting their previous academic and experiential knowledge. "We must construct a curriculum mindful of both B.S. and B.A. strengths and weaknesses…if someone has focused on a deductive method of reasoning, how will they perform in the clinical world where everything is unique and in flux? If a student comes from the humanities, how will we help them garner the important knowledge necessary to function in a world of burgeoning scientific development?"

Ruth Calderon '09 entered the GEPN Program with a B.A. in anthropology. After some post-college traveling, she returned to her native San Francisco and held an assortment of jobs involving real estate, café ownership, Spanish-English interpreting, and academic grant writing. In 2001, she had just accepted a job offer from American Airlines as a flight attendant when 9/11 deflected those plans. One day, a conversation with a nurse friend made her realize nursing had always been in her blood. "I've always enjoyed taking care of family members after surgery and during acute illnesses. When I was younger, I remember being called ‘Enfermera Ruth,' Spanish for ‘Nurse Ruth.'" Calderon chose YSN because she knew she would be surrounded by "some of the best and brightest in the field, leaders in research and interesting, accomplished peers from varied backgrounds."

Calderon is cheerfully honest about preparing for her new career: "The GEPN curriculum is dense and challenges me to push myself to learn as much as I can. Being thrown into the clinical setting by the third week of instruction was a major challenge, but in retrospect, it's one of the best experiences I've had." She hopes to incorporate international aid work into her nursing future. Her advice to anyone contemplating a move into nursing is: 1) educate yourself on the role of the nurse practitioner, 2) speak with people actively working in your field, and 3) personally investigate the type of program you're considering to get a realistic picture of what you will actually experience.

Victorio Tolentino, Jr. '10, an experienced LPN, arrived at YSN with a Master's in Public Health and a law degree from Rutgers. His decision to attend Rutgers was fueled by an interest in health policy that was sparked during his MPH studies. "I knew I didn't want to practice law in a traditional sense, but I was motivated by social justice issues," he explains. "I wanted to understand disease and health in a larger social context." Prior to entering YSN, Tolentino worked for the state of Maryland leading a team responsible for investigating physician misconduct. There, he realized that he wanted to be more directly involved in clinical work. "Each case I reviewed raised important clinical questions regarding the standard of care and the scope of practice, patient-provider boundaries, health care fraud and resource utilization, and provider impairment."

After graduating from YSN, Tolentino hopes to combine clinical practice, research, and teaching. He also wants to continue collaborating on international projects and remain engaged in health professional regulation. He is grateful for his past career experience. "Nonmedical professionals have a lot to contribute to the field, and previously acquired skills in negotiation, advocacy, finance, marketing, and public relations are more than transferrable, they're critical to navigating the clinical setting today."

Tolentino feels that a nursing career should not be viewed in a vacuum since "it intersects many professional disciplines and requires practitioners to possess a mastery of clinical topics, and an understanding of the broader context in which they practice their profession."

Pellico has her own uniquely colorful way of describing the GEPN experience: "It's three years of keeping your feet firmly planted in Jell-O. There's no such thing as terra firma anymore, the sands are always shifting, and nursing means a lifetime of retooling."

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