Pablo’s Salish Kootenai College is turning out nurses that are ready for service in rural Montana.

Licensed and registered nurses and in need on the reservation, Katherine Willock, SKC nursing department head said.

The two degrees are both specialized and focused on the needs in rural Montana.

“We are the only Tribal College in the world that has the program,” Willock said. “Patients have better outcomes when nurses are trained for rural medicine.”

Willock said that SKC students can earn an Associates of Science Nursing or a Bachelor’s of Science Nursing, each program enhances the other.

When students attend SKC they need to determine their primary medical interest. Students who earn associates degrees are licensed but don’t necessarily want to hold positions of leadership or management in the future.

Associate students’ learning is focused on healing a patient as well as working in a rural area as opposed to working in the city.

“It is a more technical degree,” she said.

Beyond learning all the mandatory requirements needed for eventual licensing, SKC nurses get an enhanced, unique experience. Because SKC is Tribal, it is also able to offer its students internships on the reservation.

“We have critical access to hospitals. And they are much broader in those small hospitals. You have to be a jack-of-all trades and a master of all,” she said. “Our learning gives nurses a broader base.”

Willock said SKC nurses work with St. Luke’s Community Hospital in Ronan, St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson, hospitals in Kalispell and Plains.

Once training is complete, nurses have a year-long rotation through various medical institutions to learn more hands-on skills.

Students who travel on to a bachelor’s in nursing get a world-view medical education, she said. Most nurses with bachelor’s degrees go into leadership and management training, which means they need to understand how medicine interacts with societies as a whole along with their hands-on’ rural training.

Training good nurses is imperative to SKC staff and to ensure long-term success, graduating nurses are scrutinized before they leave.

“They are our responsibility and we need to know we have safe nurses,” Willock said. “We are blessed with this wonderful facility. We have high standards and we turn out good nurses.”