On August 13th in Nevada, Senator Hillary Clinton walked a day in the shoes of registered nurse Michelle Estrada.

Michelle writes about the experience below:

As I was getting ready for Senator Clinton to “walk a day in my shoes,” people kept asking me if I was nervous.  It’s a big deal to have a presidential candidate and former First Lady walk in your shoes, but, really, I wasn’t very nervous at all.

I was excited.  I know the Senator cares about health care, but I wanted to show her what health care is really about in the Las Vegas valley.  Not everyone has a chance to share their experience with a presidential candidate, and I was prepared to take full advantage of the opportunity. 

Senator Clinton was scheduled to meet me at St. Rose Dominican Hospitals’ Siena Campus in Henderson, Nevada where I was already working with patients in the medical/surgical unit.  When she arrived, I was glad to see that she was wearing comfortable shoes, because there was a lot of work to be done.

After we said hello, Mrs. Clinton joined me as I provided care to my patients.  She was with me while I did hourly rounds, distributed medication, changed IVs, took blood pressures, prepared patients for surgery, consulted with doctors, and maintained the digital records.  She had a lot of good questions about our work, and I think that she learned a lot about what an RN’s job is like at St. Rose.

SEIU has a collaborative partnership with St. Rose, and as a result, nurses in the medical/surgical unit here care for no more than six patients at a time.  Because I wanted to have time to explain what I was doing to Senator Clinton, we reduced that number to four patients for the day.  It was great to have the time to explain my job in detail to the Senator, but I made sure to tell her that what she saw wasn’t a normal load – in area hospitals where nurses don’t have a voice on the job, most nurses have to care for between eight and ten patients at a time!  That’s not good for patients and it’s not good for nurses, especially young ones who are too often forced out of nursing by conditions at the bedside. 

Senator Clinton knew right away what I was talking about when I told her of the heavy patient loads many nurses in this country have and how it affects the quality if care.  Safe staffing is a really important part of fixing our healthcare system and I was pleased that Sen. Clinton recognized that.

By 7:30, we had wrapped up our shift and made reports to the nurses who care for the patients overnight.  But any working parent knows that the end of your shift isn’t the end of the day, so when we were done with our duties at the hospital, we piled into the car, (with a few Secret Service agents) and headed home for dinner.

I was proud to introduce my children to Senator Clinton.  My son Jacob will be in high school next year, Aaron will be starting at a local charter school, and my daughter Amy earned a scholarship at University of Portland where she’s going to be a freshman in the fall.  Amy is planning to follow in my footsteps by becoming a nurse, and she asked the Senator a lot of questions.  When dinner was over, Senator Clinton rolled up her sleeves to help with the dishes.

I’m glad that the Senator spent time with me and my family.  I can see every day that the decisions politicians make about health care have a real impact on ordinary people.  As an elected member of Congress, Senator Clinton has an opportunity to help create a health care system that works, and I know that when she talks about the issue now, it won’t be abstract – she’ll be able to draw on her time walking in the shoes of a nurse and a mom in Henderson, Nevada.