Jefferson Regional Medical Center nurse retires after 60 years

"Go ask Alice," was a familiar phrase at Jefferson Regional Medical Center for a long time. That's because Employee Health Nurse Alice Lawson, who recently retired, had more hospital experience than anyone else after being on the job for nearly 60 years.

A registered nurse, Lawson began as a nurse's aide at JRMC in 1964, and on June 16, she found herself greeting friends and coworkers during a hospital retirement party, reminiscing about her career and the many changes she has seen in the healthcare industry.

Lawson and her family moved to Pine Bluff from Sherrill when she was 7 years old, and her mind was already on the medical field.

"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."

That was 1964, and after some time as an aide she decided to apply to nursing school at St. Vincent hospital in Little Rock.

She was accepted into the program, and went to Little Rock to live with the nuns in a convent. For the duration of her training, Lawson followed the rigid requirements set forth by the school.

"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's sense of humor helped her adjust to the strict regulations, and some of the most noteworthy moments of her training still make her laugh.

"When we took our science courses, we traveled to UALR [University of Arkansas, Little Rock] in a big blue bus called The Ave Maria, with the name painted on the side," she recounted. "The Ave Maria would let us off at the Student Union Door and sit there until we got through with class. Also, if we had been very good and everyone had done really well on their grades, once a month we would get to watch a movie and have a Coke. The movies were on a projector and we had three that we watched over and over for three years. There were two Fred Astaire films and a Pippi Longstocking movie. The nuns loved those movies! They would sit right in the front row with their popcorn and Coke and watch those movies and just laugh and laugh."

In 1968, Lawson graduated from nursing school and went to work at JRMC on the medical/surgery floor for two years, followed by three years working in the intensive care unit. Working in a hospital was a very different experience at that time. For one thing, there were no computers, and all record keeping was done by hand.

"I bet you there isn't anyone else working here now that remembers the day shift had to use blue ink, 3 to 11 used green ink and the night shift had to use red ink. If you didn't have your own colored pen, you'd be sent home," she said.

At the same time, other actions had very few consequences.

"No one thought anything of eating at the nurse's station or walking down the hall with food, or even taking your drink into a patient room with you," Lawson said.

And then there was smoking.

"Doctors smoked, nurses smoked, they smoked going down the halls, they would stand in the doorway of a patient room and hold their cigarette out the door while they were talking," Lawson remembered. "Didn't matter what floor it was or where they were. We would be doing change of shift reports and the smokers would stand in the soiled utility room and smoke with their cigarettes out the window so it wouldn't bother anybody."

In 1973, Lawson moved to the Emergency Department, where she spent 10 years and worked closely with a lot of different doctors and nurses.

"At that time, we didn't have physicians located in the ED. If we needed a doctor we would have to get on the phone and find one. We had one physician who lived nearby, through the woods, and he would ride his moped over in the middle of the night to take call. He'd ride it right through the back door of the Emergency Department and into the hospital, wearing his silk pajamas," she said.

Nurses, however, were still wearing white uniforms with caps and white leather shoes.

"I was really kind of a rebel," Lawson said. "I had already stopped wearing my nurse's cap -- it was in my way – and when I took a trauma nursing course at Baptist, I saw their employees wearing scrubs. So I bought a pair of navy blue scrubs and started wearing them. No one said too much about it, but the next day, almost everyone in the Emergency Department was wearing scrubs. After that, it spread through the hospital pretty quickly."

In the early 1980s, Lawson started working in Human Resources and Development as the Employee Health Nurse, which was only a part-time job at first, and continued to cover the ED part-time. It wasn't long before Employee Health became a full-time position and she continued to work there until her retirement.

"I've worked with just about every employee in this hospital," she said. "I know most of them and their families, and have worked with three or four generations in some cases. I have quite a few who call me at home for advice. You keep in touch over the years and end up caring for them in more ways than just as a healthcare provider."

As a result, Lawson has been recognized in some very interesting places.

"I was in the bathroom at Disney World several years ago, and a lady came up and said 'You're that nurse!' I said, 'Ma'am?' She said 'You're that woman who works in the emergency room!' It turns out she was from Dumas, and said she was grateful for how we had cared for her husband."

With so many years under her belt at JRMC, Lawson has been through plenty of highs and lows. In nearly six decades, the covid-19 pandemic was undoubtedly the biggest hurdle to overcome.

"It was horrible," Lawson said with a shake of her head. "In addition to the employees, we also helped take care of employee family members, which frightened our staff probably more than if they had gotten it themselves. We put in a lot of hours."

Now that retirement has arrived, Lawson is ready to work in her yard and spend more time with her husband, Mike, their sons Scott and John, and their families, which include three granddaughters.

She actually tried to retire once before, but realized after three weeks that she had made a big mistake. Luckily, no one had applied for her job yet, so she went back to JRMC. This time, however, she's ready.

"I've worked with hundreds of people under eight CEOs and about a dozen chief nursing officers. 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," she said.

When asked about words of wisdom for the hospital employees she is leaving behind, Lawson got right to the point.

"The grass isn't always greener. 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," she said.

Lisa Rhodes is a communications specialist at JRMC.

Print Headline: Nurse retires after60 years

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