A nurse for nearly 60 years, Alice Lawson recently decided to retire from Arkansas’ Jefferson Regional Medical Center. Having begun as a nurse’s aide back in 1964, Lawson has cultivated a powerful legacy in health care over her decades of service. According to local news outlet Arkansas Democrat Gazette, “Go ask Alice” remained a familiar phrase around the medical center for years.
“I’ve worked with hundreds of people under eight CEOs and about a dozen chief nursing officers,” Lawson told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. “I’ve not had any bad experiences here. I was written up one time when I was in the Emergency Department, and that was because one of the orderlies set off a smoke bomb in the lounge. It wasn’t my fault, but I was on duty. That orderly, by the way, is now one of our surgeons.”
At 7 years old, Lawson already knew she wanted to work in medicine.
“My goal in life was to be a candy striper and have one of those red and white pinafores,” she said. “I just thought that was the neatest thing! But I wasn’t old enough. You had to be 16 or in the 11th grade, and my birthday was in September, so I had to wait. When I was officially 16, the hospital wasn’t having a candy striper class, so I took a job as a nurse’s aide.”
Lawson went on to apply for nursing school at St. Vincent hospital in Little Rock. While she was accepted into the school, the educational experience wasn’t easy.
“No company was allowed, not even while you were moving in,” she said. “There were no phones or televisions in the rooms and we had to walk single file everywhere we went. We dressed alike, in white dresses and blue pinafores with a big cross on them, curfews were very early, and we had supervised study every evening from 7 to 9 p.m.”
Lawson graduated from nursing school in 1968, immediately going to work for the Jefferson Regional Medical Center on the medical surgery floor. After two years there, she worked within the intensive care unit for three years. In 1973, Lawson moved to the emergency department, where she worked for another 10 years. By the early 1980s, she had begun working in the human resources department as the employee health nurse.
Now retired and ready to spend more time with her family, Lawson offered the local news outlet some advice for today’s nurses.
“The grass isn’t always greener,” she said. “While medicine has changed so much, it can’t be that different 45 minutes from here. You may leave for that golden opportunity, but chances are we have that same opportunity here.”
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