By Gina Damron, Detroit Free Press
May 12–Dorothe Canty’s first uniform was crisp and white, paired with white hosiery, white shoes and a white cap each day.
Nurses, she said, were required to give up their seats to doctors and let them exit elevators first.
There was no such thing as disposable surgery equipment; surgical tools and even gloves were sterilized and reused.
A lot has changed since Canty graduated from nursing school in 1943 — except for Canty, who, at age 85, is still working.
In honor of National Nurses Week, Canty was recognized Wednesday at Beaumont Hospital with a proclamation from Gov. Jennifer Granholm for being the oldest working nurse in Michigan.
“I guess I don’t know what the word retirement means,” said Canty of Berkley.
Canty began working at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak in 1968 and still works for a doctor affiliated with the hospital.
Some say she’s rare, and that the industry, which is struggling to keep experienced nurses and combating nursing shortages everywhere from hospitals to home health care, could use more like her.
In her 64 years as a nurse, she has worked in several capacities from emergency to surgery to obstetrics, where she’s spent the bulk of her career. Nowadays, she works 20 hours a week for a Beaumont doctor in Berkley, occasionally teaching childbirth classes.
Really, Canty said, she just loves watching babies being born. “It’s such a miracle,” she said.
Canty’s a happy mother of five, grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of five. Her three daughters all have gone on to become nurses at Beaumont, where two of them still work.
“They’ll tell you that I said they had to,” she said, with a grin on her face. “But, it’s not true.”
Daughter Darlene Ditrapani, 48, tells a different story. She said her mother always said they could be a nurse or a teacher.
Then she’d ask: “Which do you want?” Ditrapani said laughing. “We decided to do nursing. We always looked up to her.”
Despite dedicated nurses like Canty, there remains a need for more. Though there has been an influx of students interested in going into nursing, many schools don’t have enough faculty to accommodate the need, said Rachelle Hulett, head of human resources for the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeast Michigan.
Alexandra Hichel, communications specialist with the association, said the home health care and hospice industry has been hit hard, as baby boomers get older and demand grows.
“In some cases,” Hulett said, “we’ve had to limit incoming referrals because we don’t have the staff” for in-home care.
But, no matter how much the industry changes, Canty has stayed a little old school and said she works to keep young. She wore her white nursing cap until five years ago and still refers to her coworkers as “the girls.” She comes from a time when nursing felt more like a calling than a career — a time when nurses knew patients by their first names.
“Today, it seems patients are known by the number room their in,” she said. “It seems to be almost a business now.”
Contact GINA DAMRON at 248-351-3293 or [email protected].
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Detroit Free Press
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Comments