June 18, 2025 • 15 mins
The nursing shortage is worsening. After Covid-19 deadly spread killed nearly 900 people and infected nearly 100,000 residents, it also caused a substantial loss of nurses and health care workers, who worked through life-threatening conditions with inadequate supplies and staffing for much of the pandemic.
Now, the Ohio Nurses Association has issued a CODE RED, saying Ohio lawmakers need to step in to create laws that require hospitals, etc. to comply with mininum staffing standards. It's no only fair to the workers, it's crucial for patient outcomes. Find out the number one bad outcome for patients is caused by under-staffing in this program.
My guest is Rick Lucas, the Director of the Ohio Nurses Association, serving as the voice of more than 160,000 registered nurses, to protect them, their patients and communities.
Find out more on the Ohio Nurses Association website
What ONA wants you to know about the current nurses shortage
Now, the Ohio Nurses Association has issued a CODE RED, saying Ohio lawmakers need to step in to create laws that require hospitals, etc. to comply with mininum staffing standards. It's no only fair to the workers, it's crucial for patient outcomes. Find out the number one bad outcome for patients is caused by under-staffing in this program.
My guest is Rick Lucas, the Director of the Ohio Nurses Association, serving as the voice of more than 160,000 registered nurses, to protect them, their patients and communities.
Find out more on the Ohio Nurses Association website
What ONA wants you to know about the current nurses shortage
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on iHeart Cincy.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You know this violence done just affect nurses, that affects
patients directly and indirectly.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
There's a shortage of nurses and it's causing a chain
reaction of pain. Longer waits for patients who need their
meds or help to go to the bathroom, increasing frustration
of families, increasing violence against nursing and hospital staff, and
mistakes that put patients lives at risk.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We're going to hear.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Today from the director of the Ohio Nurses Association, Rick Lucas.
He's the ONA president. He remains a working nurse while
he leads the state's nursing union, advocating now for legislation
to mandate hospitals to put staffing back.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
On the priority list.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And later then in the second half of the show,
my guest is author, educator, and Cincinnati historian Sherry Brinkman.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Most of our Deeds, if you go all the way back,
we're signed by George Washington, Believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
She's here to talk about her passion for the Queen City,
her cookbooks with local recipes from famous people and restaurants,
and what she says knowing the backstory to our town
does for your life.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Now on iHeart Sinsey with Sandy Collins.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
My first guest today is the director of the Ohio
Nurses Association, Rick Lucas, who serves as the voice of
more than one hundred and sixty thousand registered nurses in
Ohio to protect them, their patients, and their communities. He's
here to discuss the dangerous hospital staffing shortages and the
rampant surge of workplace violence against healthcare workers that plagues
(01:30):
our hospitals and puts caregivers and patients and risk. Rick Lucas,
thank you for joining us here on iHeart Cincy. Thank
you for having us so Rick, Ohio Nurses Association has
sounded the Code red alarm. According to your statements, you're
seeing an increase of violence against the staff in the
(01:50):
hospitals and dangerous staffing shortages. That's what the reason you
called the code read. Your industry has had a deficit
for years with staffing. I've heard from friends that you
can't teach nurses fast enough in this country. So what
is your take on the current situation? And then we're
going to get to what are we going to do
about it?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, you know, first of all, there's a shortage of
nurses that are willing to work at the bedside under
the current conditions. And so the reason that you can't
educate enough nurses is because people are cycling through the
profession and they're not staying because of the unsafe working conditions.
So we have definitely seen an optic in violence and
(02:33):
then this chronic trend of deliberate understaffing by hospital executives.
We did a survey of nurses across the state. Over
sixty five percent of nurses reported experiencing violence in the
last twelve months.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And when you're talking about violence, you might think of,
you know, emergency room outbursts and things like that, but
this happens at the bedside. Can we talk about that just.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
A little bit about what kind of violence you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, I mean you could be talking about walking into
somebody's room and them being frustrated and throwing a jurnal
in your face, somebody taking a piece of equipment and
swinging it at you or throwing it at you. We've
had people that have been severely beaten and disfigured, lost teeth,
you know, patients groping people. So it's not just you know,
(03:29):
somebody yelling at you or being upset or these are
serious acts of violence that people are facing in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
If I were to guess if I was a betting woman,
I would say that the hospital wouldn't want you to
press charges. Does it ever escalate to a situation where
where the nurse is able to do that?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know, where we represent folks, we have a protected
voice and we're able to impact that. But there are
there are still places where hospital executives threatened staff. They
could face disciplinary action that it could be a hip
of violation. And so there are things that you have
to consider when you're when you're taking those steps that
the hospital needs to partner with with staff to make
(04:12):
sure that we're able to stand up for ourselves and
protect patients, protect privacy. But we we can't have this
violence in our hospitals. Some of the conspiracy theories that
are that are being pushed, you know, undermine trust that
folks have in their medical teams and in the in
the providers, and so drive some of it. And just
(04:35):
the the social climate that we're that we're in and
all of the unrest and and kind of viciousness that's
that's out there in the world. It's it's coming into
our hospitals, a place that should be a you know,
a safe, safe.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Sanctuary, not something that an incoming nurse really thinks about.
Do they train them for this stuff now in the schools?
Do you think or uh?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Is it just you handle it as it happens.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
There are some organizations that do some de escalation training,
but there's not there's not robust training across the board
on how to how to to deal with the situation.
You know, if a if a patient has you know,
has you buy the hair, which is not a problem
that I have, but but how to how to get
(05:21):
out of that without having them rip out a giant
patch of your hair, because that's a that's a reality.
So there's not enough training and enough resources and support.
There aren't enough security resources in the hospital to keep
people safe. This violence doesn't just affect nurses. That affects
patients directly and indirectly. If your nurse is assaulted, you know,
(05:45):
they're they're pulled away from attention, from your care while
while having to deal with that. And it's not just
that nurse, it's the whole team that has to help
respond to those situations. So it creates a distraction for
other patients, and then other people are also at risk
for the violence spilling over and them getting physically harmed
in those in those altercations.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
If you just tuned in, I'm Sandy Collins with Rick Lucas.
He is the president and executive director of O and A.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's the Ohio Nurses Association. Rick, how did you all
survive COVID?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I know you lost a lot of people who were
for various reasons, afraid, fed up, sick, whatever. Can you
quantify the loss during that time and where are we
at now?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know, I think it was around twenty five percent
of the healthcare workforce that moved on from the industry. Oh,
that's huge after COVID. You know, working at the bedside
during that time, it was it was incredibly stressful, not
knowing if you were safe. You know, my kids were
pretty young at the time when that happened, and so
having to isolate away from them, not wanting to bring
(06:57):
that to them, bring that to my parents. Lots of
people had similar experiences to that, and then not having
the support that we needed from hospital executives and then
you know, the federal government at the time, we were
reusing masks and equipment. There was no real push to
protect us. It was just standards that have been upheld
(07:19):
for years and years and years. So they were just
telling us, yeah, that doesn't matter. Today. Every day you
would come in, there was a different standard and it
was less safe. That definitely inflicted a lot of trauma
on healthcare workers.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
It just had to have been very emotionally trying watching
these people having to die by themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, my dad's twin sister came down with COVID
and she had cancer, and so she died in the hospital,
and you know, we all had to say goodbye on
a zoom call.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Rick, What is it that you and the Ohio Nurses
Association want to have happen?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And who were you asking?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So we are fighting for safe and forcible minimum nurse
to patient ratios, so there to be a standard across
the state, not just to protect us, but to protect
our patients. When you need critical care, you don't want
your nurse to have three other patients and to have
(08:24):
that attention divided because when they're not meeting the standard
of care, what the hospital's really doing is they're stealing
nursing resources away from you. To increase their profit margins.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Now, are these hospitals nonprofits?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Some of them are, but we do have some for
profit hospitals.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So it's not necessarily that problem, that distinction that causes
this problem.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, it certainly seems it is worse than these for
profit systems, but it's across the board that they try
to run as lean as as lean as possible.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, you're asking the legislature to change the law that
says a hospital has to have x amount of nurses
on a floor or assigned. And if they can't meet
that because people call a sick and they don't have
the resources, they don't have people on standby or enough
people on standby. I know they do have that sometimes,
(09:20):
how would they handle that?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Well, part of the problem right now is their plan
A is to run understaffed and so they're not even trying.
And so we need there to be accountability standards and
there are always unforeseen circumstances. So, for example, at OSU,
we have safe minimum nurse to patient ratios codified in
our in our nursing contract, and so the hospital has
(09:45):
to make prompt and diligent efforts to try to meet
those staffing standards. They have to offer out the overtime opportunities,
they have to try to post and fill vacancies to
safely staff the hospital, and so there's accountability there. So
we're not trying to close those beds. We're not trying
to upend operations or have people waiting days and days
(10:05):
for care. You know, we're asking for them to staff
safely and to create a safe, sustainable healthcare system that
meets everybody's needs.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So rick if we can kind of turn it to
the patient's needs for just a second, what kind of
effects does the nursing shortage have on those patients? For example,
you know, if the nurse has too many patients, that
leads to say longer response to the bedside, what other things.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It actually increases a patient's risk of mortality meaning dying
if a nurse has too many patients. And so you know,
if you're in the hospital and there's a subtle change
that you have or having a stroke, or you're having
a heart attack, or you're developing a severe infection, developing sexis,
those are very time sensitive that we have to identify
(11:00):
and treat, and that affects your ability to fully return
back to your optimal level. Of function. If you have
surgery and you are in pain and you need somebody
to get there with your pain medicine, you could be
waiting longer for your pain medicine. You know, if you're
somebody that needs help to the bathroom and they're not
able to get there in time, you know, you could
(11:20):
have an accident that could be really embarrassing and demeaning
with that's the last thing we want to have for people.
Or somebody gets up on their own and falls and
then suffers an injury. So somebody could fall and break
their arm or their hip or something in the hospital
because somebody wasn't there to help them get untangled and
get to the bathroom. You need to be able to
spend time with your patient, have time to assess them
(11:42):
and meet their needs and know what's going on, not
running around tasking all day and just trying to trying
to survive your shift, because that doesn't serve our patients.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
When patients call for meds, they call for a nurse,
they get angry because the nurse isn't coming. The nurses
I know, I say, well, did you tell them that
you were dealing with the guy who's actively dying in
the next room and they just want ice chips, and
they say, nope.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
We don't tell them why we didn't come.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It puts us in a bad spot. You know. If
we go in and say, well, you know, the patient
next door is dying, you do need there to be
some understanding. But if you go in and say that,
the messages is that your issue doesn't matter right now.
I had a conversation with a nurse not too long ago.
The doctor was in, gave the patient a cancer diagnosis,
(12:39):
and then the patient was trying to have a conversation
with her and she had to run out to deal
with the discharge, and so had to back out of
that conversation and then came back in. And when she
came back in, that patient was withdrawn and didn't want
to have any conversation because it was a very vulnerable time.
She needed to process that and had the door slammed on.
(13:00):
But we didn't have a better option because we were
under resource. And so we don't ever want to be
backing out of a room when somebody's having a vulnerable
moment like that needs us to be there to support them.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
When they say you need to advocate for your patients
or your family member. That doesn't mean going off on people.
And I just wanted to say that because I know
that that's a lot of the culture of what's happening
right now is that I just need to yell in
order to be heard, and they don't realize that that's
not going to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to yell, let somebody
call the chief financial officer, call the CEO or the COO,
the people that are the architects of the system that
you're experiencing. Because at the bedside, you know, we advocate
for you in the moment, but setting out you know,
those resources and all of that, those decisions happen in
the boardroom. They take things away, but then they're removed
(13:56):
from the situation, they're removed from accountability, they're removed from
seeing the real impact. And so we're not advocating for
people to you know, workplace violence for those folks, but
that try to direct that accountability where it goes and
call and let those hospital executives know, this is what's
happening in your hospital. This is what I experience as
(14:17):
a patient, this is what I experience as a visitor. Yeah,
they need to hear the human impact of the decisions
that they make and when they make cuts when they
don't have supplies, when they don't have staffing resources, that's
who needs to hear. Those are the people that can
make the decisions to impact that right.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It's a fascinating topic.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Rick Lucas, I appreciate you taking time with us today
here on iHeart since we're talking about the Ohion Nurs's
Association's legislative push to get minimum standards for staffing put
across the board in Ohio in the Ohio law and
where are we at with that right now?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
We're working to reintroduce that legislation and didn't move in
the Labe General Assembly, and so we're working to get
that legislation reintroduced. Lawmakers hearing directly from their constituents that
they want and expect to see better in the hospitals
and that you know, the lawmakers need to do their
job and help keep Ohio and safe.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Rick Lucas, thank you so much for taking time today.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Rick Lucas, the director of the Ohio Nursing Association based
in Columbus.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You know, Cincinnati is a very special place in a
very unique place in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
That's next on iHeart Cinsey
This week on iHeart Cincy.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You know this violence done just affect nurses, that affects
patients directly and indirectly.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
There's a shortage of nurses and it's causing a chain
reaction of pain. Longer waits for patients who need their
meds or help to go to the bathroom, increasing frustration
of families, increasing violence against nursing and hospital staff, and
mistakes that put patients lives at risk.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
We're going to hear.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Today from the director of the Ohio Nurses Association, Rick Lucas.
He's the ONA president. He remains a working nurse while
he leads the state's nursing union, advocating now for legislation
to mandate hospitals to put staffing back.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
On the priority list.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
And later then in the second half of the show,
my guest is author, educator, and Cincinnati historian Sherry Brinkman.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Most of our Deeds, if you go all the way back,
we're signed by George Washington, Believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
She's here to talk about her passion for the Queen City,
her cookbooks with local recipes from famous people and restaurants,
and what she says knowing the backstory to our town
does for your life.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Now on iHeart Sinsey with Sandy Collins.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
My first guest today is the director of the Ohio
Nurses Association, Rick Lucas, who serves as the voice of
more than one hundred and sixty thousand registered nurses in
Ohio to protect them, their patients, and their communities. He's
here to discuss the dangerous hospital staffing shortages and the
rampant surge of workplace violence against healthcare workers that plagues
(01:30):
our hospitals and puts caregivers and patients and risk. Rick Lucas,
thank you for joining us here on iHeart Cincy. Thank
you for having us so Rick, Ohio Nurses Association has
sounded the Code red alarm. According to your statements, you're
seeing an increase of violence against the staff in the
(01:50):
hospitals and dangerous staffing shortages. That's what the reason you
called the code read. Your industry has had a deficit
for years with staffing. I've heard from friends that you
can't teach nurses fast enough in this country. So what
is your take on the current situation? And then we're
going to get to what are we going to do
about it?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, you know, first of all, there's a shortage of
nurses that are willing to work at the bedside under
the current conditions. And so the reason that you can't
educate enough nurses is because people are cycling through the
profession and they're not staying because of the unsafe working conditions.
So we have definitely seen an optic in violence and
(02:33):
then this chronic trend of deliberate understaffing by hospital executives.
We did a survey of nurses across the state. Over
sixty five percent of nurses reported experiencing violence in the
last twelve months.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
And when you're talking about violence, you might think of,
you know, emergency room outbursts and things like that, but
this happens at the bedside. Can we talk about that just.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
A little bit about what kind of violence you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, I mean you could be talking about walking into
somebody's room and them being frustrated and throwing a jurnal
in your face, somebody taking a piece of equipment and
swinging it at you or throwing it at you. We've
had people that have been severely beaten and disfigured, lost teeth,
you know, patients groping people. So it's not just you know,
(03:29):
somebody yelling at you or being upset or these are
serious acts of violence that people are facing in the hospital.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
If I were to guess if I was a betting woman,
I would say that the hospital wouldn't want you to
press charges. Does it ever escalate to a situation where
where the nurse is able to do that?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
You know, where we represent folks, we have a protected
voice and we're able to impact that. But there are
there are still places where hospital executives threatened staff. They
could face disciplinary action that it could be a hip
of violation. And so there are things that you have
to consider when you're when you're taking those steps that
the hospital needs to partner with with staff to make
(04:12):
sure that we're able to stand up for ourselves and
protect patients, protect privacy. But we we can't have this
violence in our hospitals. Some of the conspiracy theories that
are that are being pushed, you know, undermine trust that
folks have in their medical teams and in the in
the providers, and so drive some of it. And just
(04:35):
the the social climate that we're that we're in and
all of the unrest and and kind of viciousness that's
that's out there in the world. It's it's coming into
our hospitals, a place that should be a you know,
a safe, safe.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Sanctuary, not something that an incoming nurse really thinks about.
Do they train them for this stuff now in the schools?
Do you think or uh?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Is it just you handle it as it happens.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
There are some organizations that do some de escalation training,
but there's not there's not robust training across the board
on how to how to to deal with the situation.
You know, if a if a patient has you know,
has you buy the hair, which is not a problem
that I have, but but how to how to get
(05:21):
out of that without having them rip out a giant
patch of your hair, because that's a that's a reality.
So there's not enough training and enough resources and support.
There aren't enough security resources in the hospital to keep
people safe. This violence doesn't just affect nurses. That affects
patients directly and indirectly. If your nurse is assaulted, you know,
(05:45):
they're they're pulled away from attention, from your care while
while having to deal with that. And it's not just
that nurse, it's the whole team that has to help
respond to those situations. So it creates a distraction for
other patients, and then other people are also at risk
for the violence spilling over and them getting physically harmed
in those in those altercations.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
If you just tuned in, I'm Sandy Collins with Rick Lucas.
He is the president and executive director of O and A.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That's the Ohio Nurses Association. Rick, how did you all
survive COVID?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I know you lost a lot of people who were
for various reasons, afraid, fed up, sick, whatever. Can you
quantify the loss during that time and where are we
at now?
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know, I think it was around twenty five percent
of the healthcare workforce that moved on from the industry. Oh,
that's huge after COVID. You know, working at the bedside
during that time, it was it was incredibly stressful, not
knowing if you were safe. You know, my kids were
pretty young at the time when that happened, and so
having to isolate away from them, not wanting to bring
(06:57):
that to them, bring that to my parents. Lots of
people had similar experiences to that, and then not having
the support that we needed from hospital executives and then
you know, the federal government at the time, we were
reusing masks and equipment. There was no real push to
protect us. It was just standards that have been upheld
(07:19):
for years and years and years. So they were just
telling us, yeah, that doesn't matter. Today. Every day you
would come in, there was a different standard and it
was less safe. That definitely inflicted a lot of trauma
on healthcare workers.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
It just had to have been very emotionally trying watching
these people having to die by themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, my dad's twin sister came down with COVID
and she had cancer, and so she died in the hospital,
and you know, we all had to say goodbye on
a zoom call.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Rick, What is it that you and the Ohio Nurses
Association want to have happen?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And who were you asking?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
So we are fighting for safe and forcible minimum nurse
to patient ratios, so there to be a standard across
the state, not just to protect us, but to protect
our patients. When you need critical care, you don't want
your nurse to have three other patients and to have
(08:24):
that attention divided because when they're not meeting the standard
of care, what the hospital's really doing is they're stealing
nursing resources away from you. To increase their profit margins.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Now, are these hospitals nonprofits?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Some of them are, but we do have some for
profit hospitals.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So it's not necessarily that problem, that distinction that causes
this problem.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, it certainly seems it is worse than these for
profit systems, but it's across the board that they try
to run as lean as as lean as possible.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, you're asking the legislature to change the law that
says a hospital has to have x amount of nurses
on a floor or assigned. And if they can't meet
that because people call a sick and they don't have
the resources, they don't have people on standby or enough
people on standby. I know they do have that sometimes,
(09:20):
how would they handle that?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Well, part of the problem right now is their plan
A is to run understaffed and so they're not even trying.
And so we need there to be accountability standards and
there are always unforeseen circumstances. So, for example, at OSU,
we have safe minimum nurse to patient ratios codified in
our in our nursing contract, and so the hospital has
(09:45):
to make prompt and diligent efforts to try to meet
those staffing standards. They have to offer out the overtime opportunities,
they have to try to post and fill vacancies to
safely staff the hospital, and so there's accountability there. So
we're not trying to close those beds. We're not trying
to upend operations or have people waiting days and days
(10:05):
for care. You know, we're asking for them to staff
safely and to create a safe, sustainable healthcare system that
meets everybody's needs.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So rick if we can kind of turn it to
the patient's needs for just a second, what kind of
effects does the nursing shortage have on those patients? For example,
you know, if the nurse has too many patients, that
leads to say longer response to the bedside, what other things.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
It actually increases a patient's risk of mortality meaning dying
if a nurse has too many patients. And so you know,
if you're in the hospital and there's a subtle change
that you have or having a stroke, or you're having
a heart attack, or you're developing a severe infection, developing sexis,
those are very time sensitive that we have to identify
(11:00):
and treat, and that affects your ability to fully return
back to your optimal level. Of function. If you have
surgery and you are in pain and you need somebody
to get there with your pain medicine, you could be
waiting longer for your pain medicine. You know, if you're
somebody that needs help to the bathroom and they're not
able to get there in time, you know, you could
(11:20):
have an accident that could be really embarrassing and demeaning
with that's the last thing we want to have for people.
Or somebody gets up on their own and falls and
then suffers an injury. So somebody could fall and break
their arm or their hip or something in the hospital
because somebody wasn't there to help them get untangled and
get to the bathroom. You need to be able to
spend time with your patient, have time to assess them
(11:42):
and meet their needs and know what's going on, not
running around tasking all day and just trying to trying
to survive your shift, because that doesn't serve our patients.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
When patients call for meds, they call for a nurse,
they get angry because the nurse isn't coming. The nurses
I know, I say, well, did you tell them that
you were dealing with the guy who's actively dying in
the next room and they just want ice chips, and
they say, nope.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
We don't tell them why we didn't come.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It puts us in a bad spot. You know. If
we go in and say, well, you know, the patient
next door is dying, you do need there to be
some understanding. But if you go in and say that,
the messages is that your issue doesn't matter right now.
I had a conversation with a nurse not too long ago.
The doctor was in, gave the patient a cancer diagnosis,
(12:39):
and then the patient was trying to have a conversation
with her and she had to run out to deal
with the discharge, and so had to back out of
that conversation and then came back in. And when she
came back in, that patient was withdrawn and didn't want
to have any conversation because it was a very vulnerable time.
She needed to process that and had the door slammed on.
(13:00):
But we didn't have a better option because we were
under resource. And so we don't ever want to be
backing out of a room when somebody's having a vulnerable
moment like that needs us to be there to support them.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
When they say you need to advocate for your patients
or your family member. That doesn't mean going off on people.
And I just wanted to say that because I know
that that's a lot of the culture of what's happening
right now is that I just need to yell in
order to be heard, and they don't realize that that's
not going to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, I mean, if you want to yell, let somebody
call the chief financial officer, call the CEO or the COO,
the people that are the architects of the system that
you're experiencing. Because at the bedside, you know, we advocate
for you in the moment, but setting out you know,
those resources and all of that, those decisions happen in
the boardroom. They take things away, but then they're removed
(13:56):
from the situation, they're removed from accountability, they're removed from
seeing the real impact. And so we're not advocating for
people to you know, workplace violence for those folks, but
that try to direct that accountability where it goes and
call and let those hospital executives know, this is what's
happening in your hospital. This is what I experience as
(14:17):
a patient, this is what I experience as a visitor. Yeah,
they need to hear the human impact of the decisions
that they make and when they make cuts when they
don't have supplies, when they don't have staffing resources, that's
who needs to hear. Those are the people that can
make the decisions to impact that right.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It's a fascinating topic.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Rick Lucas, I appreciate you taking time with us today
here on iHeart since we're talking about the Ohion Nurs's
Association's legislative push to get minimum standards for staffing put
across the board in Ohio in the Ohio law and
where are we at with that right now?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
We're working to reintroduce that legislation and didn't move in
the Labe General Assembly, and so we're working to get
that legislation reintroduced. Lawmakers hearing directly from their constituents that
they want and expect to see better in the hospitals
and that you know, the lawmakers need to do their
job and help keep Ohio and safe.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Rick Lucas, thank you so much for taking time today.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Appreciate you. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Rick Lucas, the director of the Ohio Nursing Association based
in Columbus.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You know, Cincinnati is a very special place in a
very unique place in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
That's next on iHeart Cinsey
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