Nurse helping colleagues with meals

Elysia King started Rad Nurse in Cape Girardeau in 2018 to help nurses in need. With COVID-19 has come a stepped-up response from health care providers, and King is doing what she can to help.

King, herself a nurse, had stepped back from the organization with the birth of her second child in 2019, after helping a couple of individual nurses in crisis, she said, and started 2020 with a goal to get back on track.

Then the global pandemic hit, and she knew she had to do something to help.

Right now, King is working with a company in St. Louis to provide frozen meals to 40 nurses in an emergency department.

“For a while, I’ve been wanting to see what Rad Nurse can do for an entire department,” King said. “In light of the past two months, nurses need help. Period. Every nurse is in crisis mode.”

King said the organization’s goal is to serve as a resource for nurses, and in talking with various hospitals and emergency departments in St. Louis, she discovered a facility whose cafeteria was not serving hot food, for infection control. Employees working long shifts in a city with multiple confirmed cases meant a lot of strain, King said.

King is working to raise funds to pay for as many meals for nurses as she can, she said, and she hopes to start a similar push in Cape Girardeau.

“The need is super evident,” King said. “It’s very overwhelming.”

King said she wants to do more, but understands people are scared.

“There’s a lot of work to do, and we have a ways to go yet,” she said.

More information about Rad Nurse is on the organization’s Facebook page.