Guess who’s coming to dinner and to work

Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and Michelle Estrada were standing at the nurse's station, as the Democratic presidential candidate was learning one of the frustrations of being a nurse - bad penmanship.

For a few hours Monday, Clinton shadowed Estrada, a union nurse at the Siena campus of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals. Estrada was trying to read a medical chart. "Make a copy of chart ... to be...." It was illegible.

"This is like a mystery!" said Clinton, wearing salmon-colored hospital garb.

It was a funny moment, but she used it to make a policy point: We need digitized medical records. Medical errors, like those caused by bad handwriting, contribute to tens of thousands of deaths every year.

Clinton was spending a few hours with Estrada as part of the Service Employees International Union's program called "Walk a day in my shoes."

To win the endorsement of the largest and richest union in the country, the candidates have had to agree to do the work of an SEIU member.

Last week, Clinton's chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, worked as a home health care worker for a day in Oakland.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson worked as a social worker here in Nevada, and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the other top-tier Democrat, worked at a nursing home in New York.

For Clinton, health care is both a strength to be leveraged, and a weakness to be wary of.

She led her husband Bill Clinton's effort to reform health care in the 1990s. So, few people know more about the byzantine American system of delivering health care, which produces far worse outcomes, for far more money, than almost every other industrialized democracy in the world.

It's a failure showing up on movie screens in the form of Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko," but also in boardrooms, where corporate executives are pushing for reform to control runaway costs on health care for their employees.

The public is also calling for change, evidenced by polls that show many Americans consider it the top domestic campaign issue of 2008. But Clinton's formidable presence on the issue also serves as a reminder:

Her effort to fix health care in the 1990s was such a complete failure that many think it contributed to Republicans taking control of Congress in 1994.

Many, including most pointedly, Obama, question whether she can build a broad governing consensus to fix the problem, rather than trying to force her solution on opponents.

As she often says on the campaign trail, she has scars to prove how hard it is to reform health care.

The hospital was sometimes an awkward environment, with numerous journalists, plus sick people being wheeled around, and the Secret Service, but Clinton showed her usual ability, honed during 15 years of extremely public life, to make it seem like she didn't notice.

David Halloway was being wheeled away to have his gallbladder removed but asked to stop.

"I told my kids never to say goodbye. Say, 'See you later,'" said Halloway, a former Marine.

"See you later then," Clinton said brightly.

Halloway came to the emergency room with extreme pain but was feeling better, and after surgery he'd be fine, said his doctor, Lyn Knoblock. Clinton talked to Knoblock about pain management. Knoblock is undecided about the presidential race, not having had much time to think or read about politics, what with being a doctor and raising two kids.

SEIU had its own agenda with the Clinton visit. St. Rose has a low patient-to-nurse ratio the union would like to duplicate, and the union and the hospital have what both sides call a "collaborative" relationship. The union pointed out that other hospitals in the valley, especially those owned by for-profit corporations, don't live up to the same ideals.

After work, Clinton went to Estrada's home, where the three Estrada children had dinner ready. Turkey tetrazine.

Amy Estrada was the most inquisitive of Clinton. She'll go the University of Portland in the fall, with the hope of becoming a nurse, like her mother.