El Dorado Nurse Retires After Half-Century of Service at Same Job

EL DORADO, Ark. (KTVE/KARD)– On Tuesday, July 23, 2024, Gladys Davis worked her last shift at South Arkansas Regional Hospital, marking the end of a remarkable career. According to officials, Gladys started at the hospital at 15 years old, earning $0.50 an hour as a nurse’s aide at Warner Brown. Now, at 84 and a half, she has served the same hospital system for 56 years, witnessing its merger with another hospital in 1987.

According to officials, her coworkers and friends gathered to give Gladys a heartfelt farewell, on Thursday. Over one hundred people attended the retirement party, where she was presented with a diamond-filled cross necklace. Danna Taylor, the President of South Arkansas Regional Hospital, honored Gladys with a speech.

This room is a testament to what you mean to so many people, I hope you enjoy this party that is about you.

Danna Taylor, the President of South Arkansas Regional Hospital,

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Taylor recounted the history of Gladys’s career and the changes in healthcare since she began. In 1968, insulin cost 99 cents, milk of magnesia was 89 cents, and the average hospitalization episode was $536. According to officials, Gladys started working full-time at the hospital, then called Union Memorial Hospital, in July 1968.

She held numerous roles in intensive care and obstetrics before she became the nightside house supervisor.

People are just as sick at night as they are in the daytime, sometimes even sicker. When I started, we didn’t have doctors at night like we do now. Nurses had to call the hospitalists for orders, and if it was something urgent, the house supervisor had to handle it

Nurse Gladys Davis