Guaranteed Healthcare

By Donna Smith 

LAS VEGAS -- It was 6:15 a.m., on day five of the Nevada Nurses Organizing Committee's healthcare road show, and the hotel lobby was filled with energy and with nurses in bright red scrubs.  The final full day of the road show brought huge challenges and huge rewards as the nurses made effective use of various venues for their healthcare reform educating efforts. 

We traveled on the bus from one end of Las Vegas to the other and from the gentle interactions with senior citizens to the snubbing delivered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV. With two stops before breakfast and three more to go before lunch, the RNs set course for a final healthcare report card road show day chocked full of education, outreach and advocacy. 

The morning's first stop was the Clark County Administration Building where the nurses greeted public employees arriving for work.  The RNs handed out their candidates' healthcare report cards, coffee and several dozen glazed donuts as the occasional county administrator would stop by and make sure the nurses stayed inside a pre-marked box on the sidewalk -- apparently the free speech zone as defined by those perhaps a bit worried about free speech.  We'd move dutifully inside the lines for a few moments and then drift back to our more relaxed mingling with cheerful Clark County workers. 

Undaunted by the warm fall temperatures or even those folks somehow threatened by the free flow of information offered by the nurses' healthcare for all message, the nurses forged onward to the next event with barely a moment to spare to stay on a packed schedule of stops.  Nurses don't scare easily or shy away from difficult situations.  And on this day they seemed particularly determined to close their remarkable statewide tour with energy, passion and solidarity.

At one local Las Vegas senior center (see Gabriela Cruz, RN, above), the nurses had wonderful interactions with the seniors waiting to begin their Friday morning bingo game. Many of the seniors expressed thanks for the message and for the attention the nurses showed them. But at another senior center, staff quickly confiscated the healthcare report care fliers, as though they feared any "campaigning" on their grounds though the seniors themselves were once again interacting positively with their Nevada RNs.

Another swing by the Las Vegas rally being held by the "Stop Obama" group didn't hold much allure, nor were there many people taking time from a busy Friday morning to listen to the negativity being spread about by the McCain-Palin supporters taking a much lower road than voters deserve in Nevada -- or anywhere.  So the RN's bus moved on.

The next stopped proved to be perhaps one of the most meaningful for me and for many of the RNs touring.  I knew that small town newspaper editors often have few staff resources, and we all knew that in order to reach more people in the state we would like to have coverage for the RN efforts at every stop possible.  So following up on a drop-in press office visit in Elko that resulted in a fine piece about the tour in the local media, we decided to stop by "El Mundo" and reach out to the Spanish speaking community.

RNs filled El Mundo's lobby and designated several of the local Spanish speaking RNs to speak to the reporter.  As the interview progressed, all of the RNs huddled tightly around and listened intently to the same message they had carried throughout Nevada being conveyed for yet another critical citizen group. 

The diversity of the RN group standing before this El Mundo reporter and his photographer and the solidarity they showed for one another was in such stark contrast to the hatred spewed by the "Stop Obama" effort that the room seemed awash in justice, in truth and in the value of every life that nurses display every day in their working lives and now sought to convey to a much wider audience.  Several of the nurses' eyes filled with tears not because of the content of the message but because of the feeling of solidarity and clarity filling the atmosphere in the tiny lobby of the newspaper office.

The reporter told the RNs that he was aware that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, was in Las Vegas and set to attend a press conference regarding negative campaigning during the presidential race, so the nurses thought they might like to go see Sen. Reid, tell him what they saw while traveling the state and enlist his support for true healthcare reform.  But when the folks protecting Sen. Reid saw all the nurses in red scrubs walk up to the casino hotel meeting room where he was speaking, they grabbed the door handles and kept us from entering.  Without ever asking what the nurses wanted, staffers blocked the Nevada nurses from talking with their own elected U.S. Senator.  Reid was whisked out a rear door to a waiting limo and left without acknowledging the RNs at all.  That was a shame, but some of the Nevada RNs vowed to contact Reid's office later on and express their disappointment in being dismissed without the opportunity to interact.

RNs are never protected from the unpleasant or more difficult situations they face.  Whether it is comforting a family that has confronted a healthcare crisis or helping a patient retain his or her dignity in the face of a broken health system that often values profit more than life itself, nurses cannot block out the truth as some of their leaders can and do. 

And on this amazing bus tour through Nevada, the nurses reached out to people in rural and urban settings, in public health and private facilities, in cafes and public squares.  They cared little whether the event had larger press coverage or whether they risked negativity from the misinformed; the nurses cared about healthcare for all, they cared about educating their fellow Nevadans and they cared about their patients. 

From the labor hall in Reno to the coffee house in Carson City, in the shopping center in Fallon and on to the college campus in Elko, and the Indian Health Service clinic in Ely -- or even passing out report cards while stalled in a construction zone stop along the highway (see below) -- and finally at the hospitals, the county building, the senior centers and even a hotel/casino in Las Vegas, Nevada will never be the same.  The touring nurses made their mark.