My name is Risa Sibbitt and I have been a nurse in Kalispell for 10-plus years. Since August, literally half of my coworkers have quit from my department. They live here in Kalispell but work elsewhere for more money. Now my department is 50% travel nurses. They make two to three times my base pay and are here for three months. On top of doing my job, I train and watch over their shoulder to make sure they are doing their job correctly. Sometimes the high proportion of new/temporary staff means more problems are created by their presence than are solved by their help. Those few of us locals remaining have to make sure traveling nurses don’t accidentally kill the patients because they are unfamiliar with the rooms, equipment, charting, physicians, and flow. The patients and our local staff are suffering. But WHY would a rational nurse stay when they can make two to three times crossing the county line?
With regard to recruitment bonuses for out-of-state healthcare, over 10 years in Kalispell, when critical-care nurses were in short supply, we had sign-on bonuses of $5,000 for two years. The overwhelming majority who was hired with a bonus left after completing two years, leaving local nurses feeling cheated.
Nurses are pleading for retention bonuses to make working in the same community we live in worthwhile – where our kids go to school and our parents go to church. We feel dejected, degraded, underappreciated, and foolish working next to new people coming in daily and literally making two to three times our wages for doing THE EXACT SAME JOB.
The Montana legislative vote against retention bonuses for healthcare who stayed during the pandemic was not a slap in the face; it was a punch in the gut.
Risa Sibbitt
Bigfork