Washington state Senator Maureen Walsh returned to the Senate floor Tuesday and offered an apology for saying that nurses "probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day."
Walsh, a Republican state senator from Walla Walla, Washington, received online backlash after comments she made over the bill last week.
Walsh said on Monday that her comments were made in the heat of the argument and then taken out of context online.
“I have great respect for nurses. My mother was a registered nurse for many years,” she said.
Since making her controversial comments last week, Washington state Senator Maureen Walsh has been sent thousands of decks of cards.
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On Tuesday, Walsh took a few minutes on the Senate floor to explain her choice of words and apologize to those who felt offended.
"I only meant to differentiate between the amount of work between an urban hospital and a rural hospital that has just a handful of patients," Walsh said. "And frankly, I'm very embarrassed for the comments. But I'm also more embarrassed for the fact that this whole issue has been gamed politically."
According to Walsh, she has been trying to respond to over 30,000 calls and emails sent to her office since her comments from last week went viral.
"It's very disconcerting for me to have things posted on Facebook, and this is not the first time this year that it's happened, and people read those things and the hateful comments start, and it wouldn't be so bad if they were directed towards me. I'm obviously quite thick-skinned, by my family is not," she said.
Walsh has agreed to shadow nurses for a 12-hour shift after an online petition collected more than half a million signatures over the weekend.
Senate Bill 1155, which has to do with breaks and mandatory overtime for certain healthcare employees, is being sent to a conference committee. The group of appointees to the committee will discuss the amendments passed through late last week.