{"id":742,"date":"2026-03-07T06:54:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conniedavis.ca\/home\/?p=742"},"modified":"2026-03-25T12:18:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:18:55","slug":"on-being-a-generalist-repost-from-13-december-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conniedavis.ca\/home\/on-being-a-generalist-repost-from-13-december-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"On Being a Generalist: repost from 13 December 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Photo taken 22 July 2008 on the Coast-to-Coast Walk across England with an Olympus Digital Camera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My adult son asked me the other day, \u201cMom, exactly what do you do?\u201d  I answered with a paragraph.  My husband told me I needed an elevator speech to explain what I do.  I have always had a problem with this.  I am a generalist.  I know a little bit about a lot of things.  I have built my life and my life\u2019s work on a foundation of curiosity.  Being raised by a teacher and traveling a lot from a very young age probably helped.  Someone else said it best:    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Dorothy Parker<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So when my nursing school classmates were choosing specialities in our final semester, I chose gerontology–it\u2019s a generalist specialty.  Like pediatrics, you need to know everything about what can happen and the limits are the age group (in geriatrics, it\u2019s less about age and more about function).  I did not choose an organ or body system.  I was speaking with one of my colleagues recently who is a diabetes nurse educator who now has specialized to such a degree that she only works with people who use insulin pumps.  She loves it!  She can know nearly everything there is to know about this unique area of practice. That must be very satisfying.  In working with older adults, I need to know about diabetes and hearts and minds and families and personal values and ethics and legal issues and end-of-life care and working on an interdisciplinary team and healthcare financing and what really matters to an older adult…the list goes on and on.  That is very satisfying as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I also work in quality improvement (QI), I\u2019m a generalist twice over.  QI is a discipline that can be applied to any endeavor.  I\u2019ve used it professionally in health care and in my personal life (What am I trying to accomplish? How would I know that I got there? What can I try?)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve rarely met a project I didn\u2019t like. I\u2019m curious: How can what I know be used in this situation?  Could I be of service?  What new knowledge and relationships will enrich my life and practice by being involved?  There is a caution here:  being too enamored of new activities can lead to a frenetic pace and a lack of attention or competency in any of the endeavors.  The trick is to stay current as a generalist, and not too scattered, unfocused or shallow as to not be relevant or useful.  I love to cruise ideas and in the current connected climate, it\u2019s never been so easy.  Twitter, blogs, networks…they all appeal to me. Knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore is part luck and part intuition.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found a\u00a0document<\/a>\u00a0 about \u201cCreative Generalism\u201d that I find intriguing (remembering that I find many things intriguing).\u00a0 According to this document, creative generalists excel in five areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n