Nursing Group, Facing Shortage of Recruits, Courts Police Officers and Firefighters

by Yilu Zhao

Denise M. Davin knows about the national shortage of nurses. As the human resources director of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, she has had 170 vacancies for months. So Ms. Davin has turned to an unlikely talent pool: active and retired police officers and firefighters.

Many officers and firefighters retire young and seek second careers. Ms. Davin is trying to persuade them to consider nursing, which will require most to return to school for two or three years. She already has seven working for her organization, which employs 1,700 nurses providing home care in New York City and Nassau County.

Bill Fisher, a retired Bronx detective, took advantage of a provision that allows New York City police officers and firefighters to retire after 20 years. In 1991, some of his colleagues were killed, and his family received telephone threats. Mr. Fisher decided to leave the force. But at 41, he was too young to "sit in a rocking chair on the porch and do nothing," he said. So he attended nursing school for more than two years and became a registered nurse.

"Being a cop and being a nurse are both about responding to people in distress, to people who have serious problems," Mr. Fisher said. "You'll have to be able to relate to people."

But there were times, he said, when he wondered whether he was suited for his new career, times when he told himself, "You are a cop, and you have no business putting a tube in someone." But such moments were fleeting, he said, and his supervisors say he handles his job well.

Michael Cullen was a paramedic on a police helicopter in Nassau, providing life-saving help. But when he became a visiting nurse, some people viewed his work very differently.

"When I hung out with my cop friends, they would tease me about being a nurse. They might call me, in a good-natured way, a sissy," Mr. Cullen said. "But hey," he added, "that's O.K. And what's better, I am now accepted by my female colleagues. They invite me to their bridal showers and baby showers."

Most female patients seem to accept male nurses. During Mr. Fisher's five years as a nurse, only two women have objected to his sex. And when Mr. Cullen foresees that a woman may be uncomfortable with him, for reasons of modesty, he asks a female nurse to take over the duty.

Many firefighters and police officers have some medical training. Most New York City firefighters, according to the Fire Department, are certified as "first responders," permitted to perform basic life-saving techniques, including restarting a heart with a defibrillator, and many police officers are paramedics.

Patrick Murtagh, 40, a Queens firefighter, is a certified first responder and has an associate's degree in nursing. He decided to use his training to work as a nurse for the Visiting Nurse Service one or two days a week, in addition to his full-time job with the Fire Department.

But the police officers and firefighters cannot quickly solve Ms. Davin's problem. Most need to return to school because the nursing service hires only those with a bachelor's degree in nursing or an associate's degree and significant experience.

Still, Ms. Davin is looking at the long term. To entice prospective nurses, Ms. Davin stresses a flexible schedule, and she is making a recruitment plan that includes offering $5,000 signing bonuses for new hires and working with the New York City Fire and Police Departments to get the word out to people considering retirement or a second job.

Mr. Cullen retired from the Police Department in 1993, and he said returning to college when he was 45 might have been the most difficult thing he ever did. "I had to sit in classes of organic chemistry, anatomy, physiology, microbiology and math with 20-year-old girls," he said. Mr. Cullen also studied under a private math tutor, who had taught his children in the same subject, to hone skills he had learned in high school.

"It was hard for us financially, too," Mr. Cullen said. At one point, he, his daughter and his son were in college at the same time.

But the investment was worthwhile, he said. The Visiting Nurse Service typically pays full-time nurses about $80,000 a year, and Mr. Cullen said that on top of his $35,000 police pension, he is living more comfortably than ever.

From The New York Times June 1, 2001.