Maine ER Nurses Resign at Fort Kent Hospital

Quick answer: Six of the 13 registered nurses in the emergency department at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent have resigned or given notice since June. Nurses cite low morale, poor communication and the loss of an overnight clerk. The hospital says the ER remains staffed with fully qualified staff and hires travel nurses to cover departures.

Key Takeaways

Five full-time nurses and one per-diem nurse have left or given notice from a 13-nurse emergency department in Fort Kent, Maine.
Nurses say morale fell after they unionized with the Maine State Nurses Association and that management communication largely stopped.
The hospital cut its overnight emergency registration clerk on September 6, so nurses now also check in night-time patients.
The hospital says departures had varied reasons, including promotions elsewhere, and that it is covering gaps with contract travel nurses.
Northern Maine Medical Center reported a $3.6 million loss for its 2025 fiscal year, according to its tax filings cited by The Maine Monitor.

About half of the registered nurses working in the emergency department at Northern Maine Medical Center, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Fort Kent, Maine, have resigned or put in notice since early summer. Staff and their union describe a breakdown in trust with management, while hospital officials say the emergency department remains staffed with fully qualified nurses. The departures, first reported by The Maine Monitor and later by the Bangor Daily News, have drawn attention to the fragile state of rural hospital staffing in far northern Maine.

How many nurses left the Fort Kent emergency department?

In June the emergency department had 13 registered nurses: ten full-time and three on flexible per-diem schedules. Since then, five full-time nurses and one per-diem nurse have left or announced they are leaving, according to Ami Maxwell, an emergency nurse who leads the hospital's nursing union, and Kim Paradis, a 24-year veteran of the hospital who worked her final shift on Saturday, September 26.

The unit also lost its manager in June. Both nurses said staff were never told why. Maxwell said the department has taken on three contract nurses so far, and that she recently trained the travel nurse who replaced a colleague and close friend.

Why are the nurses resigning?

The nurses who spoke publicly point to a deteriorating workplace since the registered nurses voted to join the Maine State Nurses Association more than two years ago. Paradis, who served on the bargaining committee, said communication between bedside staff and administrators all but disappeared and that the hospital no longer felt like the place she had worked for decades.

Hospital spokesperson Pam Sime offered a different explanation for the change in communication. Federal labor law, she said, limits what management can say during a union campaign and generally bars managers from discussing wages, hours and working conditions directly with employees once a union represents them.

Sime also said the six nurses left for a range of reasons. According to the hospital, two took leadership roles at other facilities, one became a travel nurse, one moved out of state and one was an occasional per-diem nurse. Three asked to stay on in a per-diem role or applied for other jobs inside the hospital.

What changed on the overnight shift?

On September 6 the hospital eliminated the waiting-room clerk who registered emergency patients between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Nurses and other staff, who the hospital says are trained in registration, now handle check-in when a chime alerts them that someone has walked in.

Maxwell said that arrangement is unsafe because nurses cannot step away to register a new arrival while managing serious cases. The nearest other emergency room is in Caribou, close to an hour's drive away.

The hospital says the overnight emergency team includes two registered nurses, a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, a physician, a security officer and a nurse supervisor. It reports an average of about 19 emergency visits a day, roughly 7,000 a year, with only one or two patients typically arriving overnight. Maxwell said management recently floated reducing night coverage to one nurse and a nurse technician, then scrapped the plan after criticism from staff; Sime confirmed it is "not a model we are moving to."

What is the background to the dispute?

The nurses and the hospital ratified a three-year contract in May after a long negotiation that included strikes and public protests at Fort Kent and at Houlton Regional Hospital, which shares the same management team. The agreement added a grievance process, protection against firing without just cause and a pay raise, but not the nurse-to-patient ratios the union sought, Maxwell said.

Finances are tight. The hospital says its position has improved year over year, yet its tax filings, as reported by The Maine Monitor, show a $3.6 million loss in fiscal 2025 on revenue of about $84.8 million. It previously closed its obstetrics unit in 2023 and its child and adolescent psychology unit a year later.

What happens next?

The hospital says it will continue using experienced travel nurses while it recruits permanent staff and that it monitors patient volumes and quality measures to make sure the emergency department meets community needs. Maxwell and Paradis said they remain concerned about patient safety, particularly overnight.

What this means for nurses and job seekers

For registered nurses, the Fort Kent situation reflects wider pressures in rural health care: tight budgets, heavy reliance on travel contracts and tension between unions and management. If you are weighing a rural or critical access hospital job, it helps to:

Ask about overnight staffing: find out exactly who is on shift at night and which non-clinical tasks, such as registration, fall to nurses.
Check turnover: ask how many nurses have left the unit in the past year and why.
Review the contract: in unionized hospitals, read the collective agreement for grievance rights, just-cause protections and any staffing language.
Consider travel roles carefully: hospitals filling sudden gaps often hire contract nurses, which can mean openings, but also short notice and unfamiliar teams.

For patients in Fort Kent, the hospital states that emergency care remains available around the clock. Jobsiz will update this story if the hospital or union shares new verified information.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many nurses resigned at Northern Maine Medical Center?

Six emergency department nurses, five full-time and one per-diem, have resigned or given notice from a unit that had 13 registered nurses in June. The hospital says three of them asked to stay on per diem or applied for other internal roles.

Why did the Fort Kent ER nurses leave?

Nurses who spoke publicly cite low morale, limited communication with management since they unionized, and the removal of the overnight registration clerk. The hospital says the departures had various reasons, including promotions at other facilities and a move out of state.

Is the Fort Kent emergency room still open?

Yes. The hospital says its emergency department is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that it is using contract travel nurses to cover vacancies while it recruits permanent staff.

Which union represents the Northern Maine Medical Center nurses?

The registered nurses are represented by the Maine State Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee. They ratified a three-year contract with the hospital in May.

Where is the nearest other emergency room to Fort Kent?

The next-closest emergency room is in Caribou, which is nearly an hour's drive from Fort Kent, according to The Maine Monitor.

Sources

This article was compiled by Jobsiz from the sources listed above, using AI-assisted writing and automated fact-checking. Published October 2, 2026. We update stories when new verified information becomes available.

Maine ER Nurses Resign: Half of Fort Kent ED Nurses Leave