NEWSROOM

 

June 10, 2008, ST. LOUIS - Kate Marzluf, RN, had planned to have a student nurse shadowing her on June 10. Instead, she had a presidential candidate.

 

Marzluf, 26, of south St. Louis, a staff nurse on the high risk cardiology unit (2100) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, was followed by Senator Barack Obama, presumptive Democratic candidate for President of the United States, as part of his campaign stop in St. Louis. Obama is spending the next several weeks shadowing workers across the country as he campaigns.

 

After his visit to 2100, Obama held a press conference in the Queeny Tower Restaurant at which Marzluf introduced him. Obama spoke on affordable healthcare and answered questions for local and national media traveling with the Obama campaign.

 

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Marzluf said. “I wasn’t nervous until I saw all the media.”

 

While at the hospital, Obama also met with BJC HealthCare president Steve Lipstein, Barnes-Jewish Hospital president Andy Ziskind, and St. Louis Children’s Hospital president Lee Fetter.

 

The 2100 staff handled the candidate and the contingent of Secret Service and press with aplomb.

 

“I’m really proud of them all,” said nurse manager Carla Ashmead, RN.

 

The staff said that Obama made the experience easy for everyone.

 

“He was really nice,” Amy Sibley, RN, said. “He was very interested in the med room. I was showing him the different meds and what they do.”

 

Marzluf figured if she was going to have a politician follow her around all morning, she was going to put him to work. So Marzluf asked Obama to push her computer as she went to each patient’s room.

 

"He was very personable,” Marzluf said. “He pushed the computer for me. He talked to all the patients. He was just very nice.”

 

Marzluf has worked on 2100 for five years – three as a student tech and two as a registered nurse.

 

Lorna Mae Green, 77, of St. Peter, IL, had been a patient on 2100 for two weeks. She had spent a total of 100 days in the hospital over the past year. When her daughter, Debbie Hanson, of Altamont, IL, heard who the special visitor to the floor would be, she asked if her mother, not one of Marzluf’s patients, could meet Obama.

 

After getting the okay, Hanson and Green’s nurse Amy Silbey, wheeled Green to the nurses’ station. There she shook Obama’s hand, wished him luck and had her picture taken.

 

Hanson said that meeting Obama was a dream come true to for her mother.

 

“Mom,” Hanson said as she wheeled her mother to the nurses’ station, “Tell him you’re a Democrat.”

 

To view photos of Barack Obama and Kate Marzluf, click here.

 

 

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