Ophelia Ford Rants Against Nurses In Senate Panel

Nashville, TN - "I'm telling it. I'm not telling it all cause it's so horrible you all would not even believe it."

In her more than 5 years as Tennessee State Senator, Memphian Ophelia Ford, has established a dubious reputation for occasional "other worldly" rants, often wrapped in torment and expressed in a pretzel logic only she appears to understand.

Ford's latest memorable edition to the recorded annals of the Tennessee General Assembly was her personal and emotional opposition to a bill introduced in a Senate Committee seeking to increase the penalties for assaulting health care professionals. It prompted Ford to not only issue a vote against the measure, but to reveal her unbridled blanket indictment of the nursing profession based on her frequent trips for hospitalization beginning in 2006.

"I would not be in your presence today because of mean hateful nurses. And the lower on the scale that they are with the least amount of experience, the worse they are."

Actually, in an equally strange way, Ford's rambling vitriolic diatribe might have inadvertently helped to make the case for the bill supported by the Tennessee Nurses Association. After all, health care personnel, especially in hospital emergency rooms, don't really know what they'll face in treating patients.

"We've got evidence that increased penalties work. In 2003 Nevada passed a similar law and between 2003 and 2009 there was a 50% reduction in assaults against healthcare workers," Sandra Adkins, Executive Director of the Tennessee Nursing Association.

Tennessee State Senator Barbara Marrero said, "People that sometimes might be belligerent or on some kind of medication where they couldn't possibly be aware of the circumstances around them and might act out in a way that might be harmful to people."

All solid points, but the irate Ford either didn't hear or would not even believe.

"But, nurses...I tell you to even come before this committee to ask for such a thing is ludicrous to me!"

Senator. Mae Beavers, a Mt. Juliet Republican and chairwoman of the committee, cut off Ford's angry commentary twice  before the panel ultimately advanced the bill on a 5-4 vote.