“My daughter’s running. A marathon. Oh, [she’s been training] for about a few years. Well, I think she originally started to do it – she wanted to lose weight. So she’s really down slim. We’re actually from Ohio, and she planned it – to come out here. She was going to come by herself from Ohio, but I got some time off work so I came out with her.
I’m a nurse. Well, a good friend of mine was – we went to high school together, and she was going to nursing school. Then, I thought well, why don’t I do that? And that’s actually what got me into it. Since 1975. A long time. You can do the math. I work in the pre-op department. I get people ready for surgery.
The worst part of nursing is that we don’t get treated with respect like – we’re supposed to be professionals, and we still have to punch a time clock like we work in the factory. They want us to further our education and do all these professional things, and yet management doesn’t treat us like professionals. They make us punch a time clock, and if we’re late so many times, we get wri – does that make sense?
Well, our hospital used to be a free standing surgery center. And then they added on overnight stay rooms, so we’re technically a hospital. Last year, we got bought out by a big, multi-hospital conglomerate, TriHealth. That’s not the best, but I still have a job. TriHealth has a lot of different policies about things that I don’t think are too fair. So what they do is they have 6, 7 holidays a year, where if you’re off on a holiday, you get paid. You work 40 hours a week, 5-8 hour days in two week periods. That’s 40 hours a week. If you’re scheduled on a holiday and you work, you get paid for 8 hours. But if you work your normal shift, like a 10 hour shift, like you work four 10 hour days a week, the only give you 8 hours of holiday pay. So you’re being cheated out of two hours of holiday pay because a normal work day is 10 hours. And the nurses that work upstairs on the floors that’s open 24/7? They have to work 12 hour shifts. There’s no other shifts. So when they’re off on a holiday, they only get 7.2 hours, even though their normal shift is 12 hours. They don’t work a full 40 hour week, so they don’t get paid 8 hours of the holiday. So I think that’s mighty unfair for those people. I work 8 hours a day, so it doesn’t really affect me, but I think that’s terrible that they do that. I’m hoping to retire in a couple years too.
People, patients, that’s what keeps me into it. I like taking care of people. I’m a helper. There is something new that they have at work. They have electronic charts. And we just got that. April 1st is when we started that, so that’s a big change. Instead of taking care of patients, I’m doing data entry on the computer. So it’s just trying to balance putting information into the computer and focusing on the patient as a person.
The way I think about [health care] – before you need affordable health care, there are a hierarchy of needs. You need a home, and you need food. Before they go with affordable health care, they should go with affordable homes and affordable food. Because I as a nurse, if I take care of someone who’s homeless, I’m sending them out back in the street. And what I’ve done, could easily be undone ’cause they don’t have a home. Like if they have a cast on their arm, and they’re being sent out in the rain, their cast is going to get all wet, and it’s going to be all for naught. So I think before the tackle the health care, they should tackle the homeless issue, and be sure everybody has food. I think [health care]’s fine for down the road, but right now they should take care – have everybody have a home.”
Excerpt may be edited for clarity.