Full Time RVer

As winter looms around the corner, plenty of folks from the north are looking to warm their feathers in the Sun Belt. Temporary job opportunities pop up, and many snowbirds are filling them.

What about the other side of the coin? When the weather heats up next spring, there are plenty of folks who will “abandon ship” and head north. If you’re a nurse and looking for a place to cool off next year, Galesburg, Illinois would like to think about them.

According to a story in the Galesburg Register Mail, a snowbird nurse got the idea going. Lauren Heiy, a retired RN, spent a couple of years snowbirding in Brownsville, Texas. There she took on part time work in an area hospital. Brownsville gets a bit on the warm side when winter ends, and Lauren got to thinking. “I often wondered, why don’t hospitals in colder climates offer the opposite, a ‘sunbird’ program? After all, during the summer, unit-based staff wants vacation, and what better way to staff than your own PRN group of nurses?”

When Lauren got “home” to Galesburg, she floated the idea to officials at the local Galesburg Cottage Hospital. Administrators didn’t take long to find the idea a hit, and now have started a sunbird nursing program where semi-retired nurses who want a cooler summer spot can drop anchor and work for them.

Galesburg is town of some 35,000 residents where nursing goes back a long way. During the Civil War, Galesburg resident Mary Ann Bickerdyke saw a need among Union soliders for good nursing care. Leaving her Galesburg home, she became one of the most outspoken and beloved nurses under the command of General William T. Sherman, who himself reportedly said of Bickerdyke, “”She outranks me!” “Mother” Bickerdyke went on to establish some 300 hospitals for treating Civil War soldiers.

Interested in doing a stint in Galesburg? Call Cottage’s Human Resources office at (309) 345-4250

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