Skagway’s medical clinic continues to lose personnel from its already short staff as another nurse practitioner and another member of the support staff have resigned. On Thursday night the clinic board of directors met to discuss how to stop the exodus and were joined by many residents that wanted the chance to speak their minds.
The assembly chambers at Skagway City Hall were packed on Thursday night with citizens looking to share their experiences at the Dahl Memorial Clinic which has suffered from high staff turnover over the last year.
There was an interesting wrinkle to the proceedings, however. When the time came to hear citizens present, the board president instructed those gathered not to criticize anyone by name. If their story was positive, however, the speakers were free to use names.
Jan Wrentmore was one of several residents who spoke glowingly about an outgoing nurse practitioner she’s been seeing for years.
“That’s like an intense personal loss for me,” said Wrentmore.
But others had concerns about their experiences.
Skagway resident Kaylynn Howard told KHNS the story of how she went to get birth control and was asked by a nurse if her partner had given her consent.
“I just felt like they were just trying to tell me that I shouldn’t be getting this, and (they) were not very encouraging of this procedure at all,” said Howard.
According to Howard only after what felt like a long, unnecessary discussion did she received the birth control. Four months later, after experiencing complications, Howard went back to the clinic and saw the same nurse practitioner and asked for the birth control device to be removed.
“Once again was very rude to me. And tried to ask, well, have you asked your partner’s permission? Like, does your partner know that you’re trying to remove this? I was like, well, I’m not trying to get pregnant, I want it removed because I think my body’s rejecting it. And explained all these side effects that I was having,” said Howard.
Howard said she went through the proper channels to file a formal complaint about her experiences. But was told by the executive director that if she pressed to have her story presented to the board of directors her personal information could be aired in public.
Clinic Board President Cory Thole told KHNS that Howard had followed the proper channels to file her complaint by emailing the executive director.
“Let me start by thanking Kaylynn for sharing that story. And bringing that to the board’s attention, because it was certainly the first time that I and the other board members had learned of any of those details,” said Thole.
Thole said that the executive director was mistaken about the protocol for bringing a complaint to the board of directors.
“I believe that the executive director was just trying to be clear in terms of what could possibly happen,” said Thole.
According to Thole, if the complaint went in front of the board, the medical provider could ask for the story to be made public, but the patient’s personal information would be kept confidential.
This comes as two more staffers, a nurse, and an administrator, have recently resigned at Skagway’s clinic which only employs about a dozen people. The clinic’s board says it’s actively looking to replace outgoing staff. They have contracts with multiple staffing agencies and are looking at ways to possibly increase wages to attract qualified applicants to Skagway.
The process to potentially bring on the Southeast Regional Health Consortium, known as SEARHC, to present a potential management plan is underway. A non-disclosure agreement has been signed by the board and the community can expect a proposal from SEARHC on how it would run the health clinic within the next six months.
