Watch: 2 Former St. Luke’s Nurses Explain Why they Quit, and What is Happening in the Nursing Industry
By Greg Pruett • September 23, 2021Idaho Dispatch had an opportunity to sit down with two former St. Luke’s nurses who recently quit their jobs.
Katie Sullivan and Danny Merkes have been nurses for over 30 years and 20 years, respectively. Sullivan was with St. Luke’s for over 20 years and Merkes for over 17 years of his career.
Both nurses quit their jobs on August 27th, even with hospitals seeing many patients with Covid-19 and Governor Little saying ICU beds are full.
Idaho Dispatch talked at length with both nurses to find out what drove them to quit St. Luke’s and give them an opportunity to speak out about nursing issues they thought were important. The interview was conducted on September 20th, and the only edits in the video are at the request of the interviewees.
The full interview can be seen on YouTube or Rumble:
While Merkes says in the interview that while the Covid-19 vaccine mandate was the final straw, he cites issues with St. Lukes upper management and the overall declining treatment of nurses as issues that have been building for years. Sullivan tells Idaho Dispatch that she got the Covid-19 vaccine because of peer pressure from her family and her coworkers but ultimately decided that the treatment of her co-workers by St. Luke’s drove her to quit.
Idaho Dispatch will now reach out to St. Luke’s for a response to the interview.
For those who watch the interview, the “Description” in the video has timestamps for the various topics discussed throughout the video to make it easy to jump around if you choose.
A few of our readers have asked if we will interview nurses, doctors, or staff who favor the vaccine mandate or like the way St. Luke’s treats its employees. Idaho Dispatch has always tried to cover both sides of a story and is willing to interview those who do hold an opposing view to these two nurses.
Many mainstream media outlets have given interviews to nurses and doctors who support the vaccine mandate. However, Idaho Dispatch is not aware of any interview with nurses in Idaho who have quit over the vaccine mandate or other reasons.
What did you think of the interview and what the nurses had to say? Do you agree or disagree with them?
Let Idaho Dispatch know in the comments below.
Tags: Covid-19, Danny Merkes, Katie Sullivan, St. Lukes, Vaccine Mandate
16 thoughts on “Watch: 2 Former St. Luke’s Nurses Explain Why they Quit, and What is Happening in the Nursing Industry”
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I left St Lukes last March. I saw the mandate coming and I was already so done with the upper management, it was all I needed to convince me it was time to leave. I drove 70 miles round trip through two mountain canyons for almost 7 years to work for them and I would have kept doing that but because of the mandate and the lack of appreciation for how hard I worked for them, I haven’t regretted leaving for a second. I have not missed the big corporate money making machine that St Lukes has become that treats you like nothing more than a number. I took my 30 years experience elsewhere.
Good for you Lisa, we wish more would follow your lead in order to eliminate these “unhealthy” monopolistic travesties.
Listening to reasons why these two experienced nurses at St. Luke’s gave for leaving the hospital gives pause to a possible corrupt and biased management at St. Luke’s. It seems that the more mature a nurse becomes in their profession, the less incentive they have in remaining in the profession because their pay gets reduced why incentives are given to young inexperience nurses with writing “papers”, etc.. It tends to give the impression that older nurses get punitive measures by management to leave (as these two chose to do) to avoid retirement benefits, and higher wages. It’s disgusting how St. Luke’s is managed. Perhaps St. Luke’s and St. Al’s needs some competition in Treasure Valley.
big money st lukes doe,s not care about anything but the money for there stock holders. st lukes are making millions from the tax payers because of this virus from the tax payers and goverment. just another greedy outfit.
St Luke’s is a not-for-profit business, so it doesn’t have stock holders.
Luke’s is compliant in the CDC cover up of VAERS data and all the rest, I would go to a Vet before entering their ‘hospital’ and being given a faulty PCR test which would then lead to a false positive, a ventilator, remdesivir and death! If we had REAL Gov. he/she would be giving out Ivermectin like candy, then he/she would establish a medical system based on truth, real science, and offer non vaxxed employees a place to do their jobs without threat.
I’m with you: I would rather bleed out than go to any hospital right now. It’s all about the TAXPAYER money and pushing drugs. Big Pharma bought and paid for hospital administrators and providers a long time ago. Stay out of these death traps!
Great conversation with what’s really going on.
Thank you for sharing this, it really puts a lot of the propaganda in perspective.
While it puts certain propaganda in place it also reveals the role of the media in advancing half truths regarding why current staff are struggling as they are. Not only are they short staffed in possibly critical areas, but as they carry a patient load meant to be addressed by many more, they work under tyrannical conditions imposed by the corporate world. Not a place I would ever go for treatment.
I said “never St. Lukes again” some 20 years ago when my wife almost died after standard op… Rx to post op pain killer. Not the Rx issue but how they reacted afterwards. I wrote to key management with needed corrective actions to minimize chance of such happening again and absolutely no response.
The revelations here point to the upper management as being installed by a coordinated effort to drive this Plandemic narrative. This is Corpo-Communism for sure.
Recently I’ve settled upon “global oligarchical socialism” as a possible candidate for a descriptive label.
Thank you very much for your honesty, for your working and selfless giving through the years. This is typical in so many businesses. Unfortunately you were treated as a business product. What you had to say was phenomenal.
I was in medical school 45 years ago and I started noticing some of the same attitudes in the pushing of unnecessary medication and procedure usage, inappropriate and fluid transitions in standards and protocols and much less respect for previous experience and knowledge. When I mentioned these situations to my mentor, a local pediatrician, she nodded, then said sadly and slowly, she was worried at the track medicine was taking that day and worried what it portended for now and would be in future. It stayed with with me what she had said, and I eventually left to go in a different direction. It was that what eventually gave me more personal satisfaction and much less mental turmoil, in my chosen field 4 years later.