Mass, 71, is scheduled to retire at the end of this month as chief nursing officer, although she is likely to stay through August while a replacement is chosen.
Born in Lowell, Mass., she trained at a nursing school in Springfield. "The first day I had to put a needle in a patient, I couldn't do it. I stood right by the bed, the patient's face turned toward the wall. I was crying. The instructor was so furious with me. Tears were rolling down my face. 'I'll never be able to do this.' I remember this like it was yesterday."
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She did learn to give a shot, but she has spent virtually all her career in nursing education and management.
For a time, when her children were little, she tried being a stay-at-home mom. "Every season, I went to the fabric store and bought fabric depicting the season. I made new kitchen curtains. I had Halloween pumpkins, Christmas scenes, Valentine things, Easter bunnies. My mother said, 'Find that woman a job -- get her away from the sewing machine.' "
In 1975, she moved to South Florida, first teaching part-time at Florida International University, then becoming director of the Jackson Memorial nursing school before moving on to hospital administration.
Q. Healthcare is supposed to be recession-proof. So is government. Close to retirement, couldn't you have saved yourself a big headache and retired rather than participate in the lay off of 500 workers?
This was the first time in all my years here that we've laid off front-line workers. I think you need to take the good with the bad. To have people here that the staff knows - that's actually very important during this time.
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Q: The layoffs involved a complicated "bumping process" in which senior nurses whose jobs were eliminated could bump junior nurses in other departments. How did that go?
Martha [Baker, president of the nurses' union], and I worked very well together. Negotiations are give and take. We finally developed three lists of nurses. The A List -- highly skilled in the operating room, intensive care. The B List was more generalists, and the C list was the clinics and out-patient things. So the layoffs would be within those lists.
When it got down to advanced nurse practitioners, Martha and I sat down for many hours. We both had a common interest in having the right nurse in the right job. Sometimes, Martha would call up Jane and John and say, "Why don't you two work together" to arrange a job swap. That was voluntary and we'd put our blessing on it.
Q: Did you personally have to lay off people?
I certainly gave letters to people, about 20 to 25, mostly nurse managers. They came in one-by-one. There were a lot of tears. I didn't have anyone angry. I think anger sometimes comes after that. But there was hurt and fear. We have a recall list. If a job becomes available in the next two years, we'll call you back.
Q: So the recession has ended the nursing shortage?
Right now, because we've laid off nurses, there are not a lot of nursing jobs out there, but the nursing shortage is not going away. It's been masked by the economic downturn. People are staying put. If you were going to retire, houses have lost value, and you were going to use the house money to relocate, maybe you need to work another year or two.
But I think in a couple of years, it's going to be horrific. Florida predicted they were about 18,000 nurses short in 2010. I'm not sure that happened because of people not moving, but they're predicting a 52,000 shortage in 2020.
Q: What was your best moment at Jackson?
Oh, there's been so many. But here's one: We've had the administration working for four years on developing a self-governance model for nursing. We've developed unit practice councils. I think we have 83 of them up and running now, where staff nurses come together and look at initiatives that would improve patient care in their unit. They come up with wonderful ideas and their enthusiasm is wonderful. When I sit in those meetings and listen to them -- that's a shining moment for me.
Did your 94-year-old mother give you permission to retire?
She just said, "Take care of yourself, Jane."
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