After 20 years working 2nights/2days per week in Inpatient pharmacy at SVAMC, I was asked if I would work all nights upon anothers retirement. I said only if you can pay me more; as nights= same pay as evenings but you are covering 4 hospitals by yourself often w/o any tech support. I was offered a retention allowance of 5% if I would take the job. The retention allowance has now been taken away after two years. Why should I stay on nights w/o additional compensation for the much harder job? My 28 years working in a hospital enables me to do this job as no new grad could. Noone on staff minds my making 5% more for covering a very undesirable and difficult shift.

Rentention bonuses cause many hard feelings between staff. The real solution is to pay us all salaries that are equalivent to the private sector. Then perhaps the best people would want to work here in the first place.

It happened to me. After taking on more and more responsibility in administrative roles with direct impact on national VA programs, in addition to continued clinical patient care, my retention allowance was cut. As a PA with over 30 yrs of experience and expertise in my field, I had maxed out in my grade more than 15 yrs ago. I developed and managed a VISN wide program for eight medical centers, had several private sector offers for employment, but chose to stay with the VA. With the elimination of my retention allowance, and frustration with VA in general, I decided that patient care was more important to me and was fortunate enough to have a position open up in my preferred field at the local VAMC. It's too bad that the decision to eliminate retention was implimented across the board without thought to how this would impact individuals and key programs.

The fellow I trained with is making twice my salary in a private hospital setting. I stay at the VA because I love my job. I love working with residents and having the academic affiliation, but it's getting harder and harder to convince my husband that I should not move on to a much higher paying job, which would be very easy for me at this point in my career. Loss of a retention bonus might clinch my decision to leave.