The motion prevailed.
Senator Runestad’s statement is as follows:
This issue is personal to me because I have a sister and daughter-in-law who both were nurses. They have left the profession. In both cases, they didn’t want to leave. It was things they saw while they were in the profession. In one case, the understaffing that required her to work enormous numbers of hours beyond her capacity she felt to do the job properly, along with being attacked—physically attacked—by patients. In the other case, it was, again, understaffing issues that she felt as a supervisor of nurses that she couldn’t in good conscience continue doing the job.
These bills I don’t believe at all solve the problem. The bill is applying only to individuals with the patients. So, family members, visitors, but not to the patient, and every case my sister-in-law outlined, it was the patient. Ostensibly, the rationale why they didn’t want to include the patient could be high, drunk, schizophrenic, or a number of issues. That certainly could apply to the person there with them, yet they would still pay that penalty but not the patient. The patient oftentimes might just be a nasty drunk. Should the nasty drunk be allowed to abuse the patient and not have these additional penalties? To me none of that makes any sense. Eighty percent of the assaults from what we saw in committee are by the patient. Only 10 to 12 percent are by the family members, and who knows if they are in their right mind. To me, this does not at all help the situation, posting that you can be charged with an extra assault. If you’re going to be charged with assault, most people know that. I don’t think this is going to make a dime’s worth of difference.
Where does all this end? We just increased penalties for insulting a DHHS employee. I saw a video of a teacher in Flint get a chair bashed over her head, breaking the chair. This kind of stuff happens in schools. Are we going to increase it in the schools? It happens to firefighters, poll workers, waitresses, legislators, when are we going to end all these carveouts? The root of the problem as I see it is understaffing. If there were individuals in the room when this was occurring who could help the nurses, that they can get help in these situations, wouldn’t help. Very often when talking to these individuals, the hospitals rarely ever report these. They don’t want the bad news of, Oh geez, we’ve had the assaults. A lot of prosecutors don’t want to deal with these. I don’t think this is going to help at all with what the real needs are—increasing staffing, making these hospitals report these cases would make a big difference. I will be voting “no” on these two bills.
Senator Singh moved that rule 3.902 be suspended to allow the guest of Senator Chang admittance to the Senate floor.
The motion prevailed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4521, entitled
A bill to amend 1931 PA 328, entitled “The Michigan penal code,” by amending section 82 (MCL 750.82), as amended by 1994 PA 158.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: