"RETIRED" BUT NO PLANS TO STOP PRACTICING NURSING
Half a Century of Nursing!
By Megan Rowe

When 16-year-old Ann Carr began college, she tried to keep her age a secret so other students would think she was 18. Fifty-five years later, she enjoys reminding her former classmates that she’s only 71, still the youngest at class reunions and one of the oldest registered nurses at the University of Virginia Medical Center.

“There’s something about nursing,” said Ann Carr Toms, who now works on the endoscopy unit in U.Va.’s Digestive Health Center of Excellence. “If we haven’t gotten out of the profession by the time we’re 60 or 65, it seems like we just hang in there.”

Toms grew up in the small coal mining town of Itmann, W.Va., and graduated from high school early because she had skipped two grades. She recalls that there weren’t a lot of career choices for women at the time, and one of her neighbors encouraged her to pursue nursing. She attended Mary Washington College for two years before transferring to U.Va.’s new four-year nursing degree program.

In addition to working three months on each unit of the hospital, nursing students focused heavily on chemistry, anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, Toms said. The pace was intense, but, “I don’t think the thought of failing a state board even crossed our minds.”

After graduating in 1958, Toms immediately began her career on U.Va.’s male thoracic-ortho unit. She worked there for a few months before joining a friend in Bermuda to work as a nurse on a naval base. “I met lots of great people,” she said. “But being a small-town girl, I’d never been that far away from my family for that length of time.”

She returned to U.Va., where she met another U.Va. graduate, the man who became her husband, and they had two daughters. She worked nights in the surgery unit, the hospital’s new burn center, thoracic surgery and orthopedics and spent a summer in the RN pool, where she got experience in U.Va.’s surgical and medical intensive-care units. She and her family lived within walking distance of the hospital, and her daughters often walked there to visit.

Toms spent three years as a school nurse at Blue Ridge School northwest of Charlottesville but disliked having to live on the school’s campus and returned to U.Va. to work on the surgery unit. Soon after, in 1989, U.Va. opened its current inpatient hospital, and she moved to its 5West unit, eager to work with liver transplant patients. A few years later, she got a call from a friend in endoscopy, offering her a job with weekends and holidays off.

“I didn’t know nursing had such jobs,” Toms joked. “I love the flexibility now.”

Toms officially retired six years ago but never actually planned to quit nursing. Instead, she has gradually reduced her working hours and has no plans to stop altogether.

“I think you have to keep moving to keep your brain from rusting,” she said. “I’m just so totally amazed. I never thought I could still be running up and down hallways at this age. It’s just so cool.”