Meet Arlene W.

Reflections on a 50+ Year Career in Nursing

Back in the late 1960s when Arlene (Welch) Watrobski was finishing up her studies at Tamarac High School and hoping to start a career in nursing, she applied first to the RN diploma programs at Samaritan Hospital and Memorial Hospital, but, disappointingly, found she didn’t quite meet their standards.

It was the then relatively new associate degree program at Hudson Valley Community College that gave her a chance, and now, as she looks back on an award-winning and rewarding 50+ years in nursing, she wants to say a simple “thank you” to Hudson Valley for helping her begin her career.

“I was so thankful to have gone to Hudson Valley. I was not accepted into two nursing programs when I got out of high school,” she said. “I just had an amazing career because I was given that opportunity. A two-year degree worked for me, and I had a great experience at Hudson Valley.”

After passing her boards at age 19, Arlene’s career began at Samaritan Hospital - where her mother also had a 25-year career as a nurse’s aide - and then continued at hospitals in Rochester and Columbus, Indiana, as she and her husband moved for his career. She loved the work and she loved the camaraderie that came with emergency room nurses and doctors meshing together as a team.

“You have to have real compassion for people. I worked in the ER for most of my career, and you have to look at your patients as humans, not just say ‘there’s a stroke in room 3 and an appendectomy in room 5’,” she said. “I want them to know my name and I want them to know that I really care about their situation.”

Her most recent career stop was more than 20 years at one of the busiest inner-city hospitals in Charleston, South Carolina. After years of working together as a team, she said, the ER nurses at Roper Hospital had an innate sense of how to triage patients.

“I used to tell people, if you need the emergency room, come to Roper on the weekend because we’ll have over 300 years of nursing experience on staff. Eventually, you gain an intuitive grasp for what the best course of action is for your patients and you become far more valuable to the doctors and your fellow nurses,” she said.

It’s those decades of experience and the desire to show new nurses how rewarding the profession could be, that led Arlene to recently stand in front of a group of soon-to-be-graduating RN students in Charleston. She was asked to speak by a former nursing colleague who is now teaching, and told the graduates to think about the big picture when looking for a job.

Arlene spoke about her own career and emphasized how important relationship building is among nurses and doctors, as well as with patients. She talked about how, for her, nursing was a career that could sustain a family, a scenario that unfortunately played out when she suddenly became a single mother and had to provide for two daughters on a single salary. She reassured them that, yes, nursing has always been a high-stress career, but it’s also one with incredible rewards.

“I had an amazing career that lasted 52 years. It is hard work but there’s always a nursing job. I just had major back surgery and I’m 72, but if I could find a younger self I would go back and work. Nursing has given me a lot.”