Going back to school is not the kind of thing most people do when they’re pushing 70. But Aline Holmes, 67, a nurse leader in the field of health care quality and safety, is no slave to convention. “It was on my bucket list,” she says. “It’s one of the things I wanted to do before I die.”
Holmes is senior vice president for clinical affairs at the New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA) and director of the NJHA Institute for Quality & Safety—positions she has no intention of leaving any time soon. Indeed, she upped her workload at age 64—the traditional age of retirement—when she enrolled in a doctor of nursing practice (DNP) program at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.