SON: Connections - Spring 2002

Headlines | Briefly | From the Deans Desk | Alumni News

Voices from the New "Wonder Years": Life After "Retirement"
Doris Carnevali, MN
Professor Emeritus of Community Health Care Systems
An internationally-renowned expert on clinical decision making.

"The first decade after my retirement in 1982 I continued to do a lot of workshops and I did some teaching and consulting in Sweden, some lectures in Norway, and I presented a paper in Australia. There were more editions of Nursing Management for the Elderly, a book I authored with Maxine Patrick. I also wrote a book on diagnostic reasoning with Mary Thomas. Life during this period was very different from what I had anticipated. I translated one of my books into both Swedish and Norwegian and did little workshops all over Sweden, staying in private homes and experiencing everyday life in ways I never could as a tourist. Eventually I began to feel I had been out of the clinical setting too long to still serve as a consultant, although I stayed in the professional arena by serving on Virginia Mason's governing board. For the last ten years, however, I have immersed myself in volunteering at an elementary school, teaching creative writing to third graders. I work with the students in the classroom and then take their rough drafts home to edit and type up. At the end of the year each student has a book of personal writing that includes both the rough drafts and the edited copy, to show their parents and themselves how much they have learned."

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