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Nursing Skills Impacting State Policymaking
Alumna’s nursing background helps her make informed decisions and advocate for constituents.
Rachel Baker is applying her nursing skills to Ohio public policymaking. Baker, a UC Bachelor of Science and PhD in Nursing graduate, was elected to the state House of Representatives for the 27th district, which includes parts of Cincinnati’s east side. Since taking office in January 2023, she has leveraged her nursing background and professional connections to make decisions and involve the community in statewide issues.
For Baker, a nurse scientist for Cincinnati-based health system TriHealth Inc., political aspirations were not in her purview until the pandemic took hold. After watching local elected officials make decisions about health and safety, she became more aware of government processes and realized nurses’ skills would translate well to policymaking.
“This light bulb went off that nurses should be at the table doing this, because this is what we do,” Baker says. “We make hard decisions with patients. We incorporate lots of viewpoints and different priorities, we collaborate with different people and we’re the person who brings it all together. And to bring those skills to legislation would be amazing.”
As a nurse scientist, Baker works with bedside nurses at TriHealth locations to answer clinical questions with current research and available data. If neither exists to answer the question at hand, she collaborates with nurses to design a research study and publish or present the findings locally or nationally. As a recent example, Baker worked with post-anesthesia care unit nurses to investigate the optimal time to remove a patient’s oxygen mask after a procedure. Their study found that keeping the mask on 15 minutes longer reduced instances of nausea and vomiting, common side effects of anesthesia.
More than research and evidencebased practice, Baker’s background centers on relationship-building and advocacy. She earned her first bachelor’s degree and a master’s in social work, but after observing nurses as a medical social worker, she felt called to the nursing profession.
“I thought, Oh my gosh, I love this, because it still has the relationship aspect — the support and advocacy part of social work — but with more science,” she says.
She enrolled in UC’s accelerated nursing degree program and went on to earn a PhD in nursing.
“UC absolutely prepared me for my role, and I had a great experience there,” she says. “I was challenged and pushed further and further along, so it had a huge impact.”
Already, Baker has applied her experience building relationships and advocating for others as a social worker, bedside nurse and nurse researcher to policymaking; she is working across the aisle to champion bipartisan legislation that would modernize the state’s adoption code. Baker says she and others brought together as many adoption-related groups as possible for feedback, including public and private adoption organizations, the state’s Department of Job and Family Services, parents and many more. With as much input and consideration baked into the bill, it unanimously moved through the House.
Along with improving the lives of Ohioans, Baker hopes her work will show other nurses they can make a difference in policymaking.
“I think all nurses should be researchers and they could all be policymakers, too,” she says. “Nurses have a lot of skills to bring, so I’m hoping more nurses get involved.”
The college’s Interim Dean Gordon Gillespie, PhD, DNP, RN, FAAN, has worked with Baker in academic and professional settings for more than a decade and looks forward to following her political career.
“I’m proud to know Rachel personally,” he says. “I can attest that she is highly ethical, compassionate and competent and will continue to be an amazing legislator.”
Baker also serves as an adjunct professor for UC College of Nursing. She teaches online courses in Biostatistics for Evidence-Based Practice and Research and Best Evidence for Clinical Reasoning.
