Survey Update......Survey is now closed. Please go to Survey Results to see the response from the allnurses community.
Once again, it is a nurse who has taken the Ebola media spotlight this week. Kaci Hickox, a nurse who cared for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone found herself quarantined against her will in New Jersey upon her return to the US, in spite of the fact that she tested negative for the virus. After a 3 day isolation in less than desirable accommodations, she was transported home where she was supposed to remain under home quarantine but is now declaring that the quarantine is unnecessary and counterproductive, and is openly defying the order by going out in public.
Additional breaches in voluntary quarantine from those returning from Ebola-plagued Africa occurred when NBC medical correspondent, Dr. Nancy Snyderman in New Jersey and Dr. Craig Spencer in New York left their homes and ventured out into public spaces.
On Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called for voluntary home quarantine for workers with the highest risk for Ebola infection. It also specified that most medical personnel returning from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea would not need to be kept in isolation.
In spite of this, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, mandated a 21-day mandatory quarantine policy for all healthcare workers exposed to Ebola. Although this move has received much criticism, it did get the support of Dr. Bruce Beutler, an American doctor and researcher and Nobel Prize winner for Medicine and Physiology for his work researching the the body’s overall immune system. He is currently the Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at the University of Texas Southwestern Center in Dallas. He favors Christie’s quarantine policy “because it’s not entirely clear that they can’t transmit the disease,” referring to asymptomatic healthcare workers like Kaci Hickox.
New York and Illinois have also have followed suit and mandated mandatory 21-day home quarantine policies. Although there is plenty of scientific evidence indicating there’s very little chance that a random person will contract Ebola unless they touch bodily fluids of an infected person, the thought is that the authorities need to do something to calm Americans’ fears. As Mike Osterholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, says, "You want to try to eliminate not just real risk, but perceived risk."
There are thoughts on both sides of this issue which has led to heated discussions at times. There are concerns about the potential impact with both pathways of re-entry requirements for Ebola healthcare workers. What are your thoughts about this? Please take our survey to share your opinions. Let your voice be heard.
I look at most things from a nursing prospective. A hazard of the job I guess.
If I had a patient, who had an unreasonable belief or fear, what would I do?
Would I bluntly say "You're wrong, here's the science, you're being unnecessarily hysterical." Would I ignore the science and pander to their fear? Or would I try, with compassion and understanding to find a middle place?
I think Kaci's logic is spot on, but we're dealing with people who hold thousands of different beliefs. She may be right, but she's also rubbing people's noses in ideas they don't believe in. She's angered and alienated at least half the country. She's not a good example of the nursing profession.
She should have stayed home the 21 days, and continued to try and educate the public.
Like the CDC's recommendations, my thoughts on this have evolved over time. I do think people who have close contact with symptomatic Ebola victims should be quarantined. That was done in Dallas with the family and is a major part of how Firestone stopped Ebola at their Liberian rubber plantation. Health care workers who wear appropriate PPE should probably not be routinely quarantined.
The quarantine of US troops who had no contact with Ebola victims makes no sense at all. It just fits into the mixed messages our administration has been giving.
It is all about politics, if it wasn't election time this whole ebola situation would probably be handled differently.
I look at most things from a nursing prospective. A hazard of the job I guess.
If I had a patient, who had an unreasonable belief or fear, what would I do?
Would I bluntly say "You're wrong, here's the science, you're being unnecessarily hysterical." Would I ignore the science and pander to their fear? Or would I try, with compassion and understanding to find a middle place?
I think Kaci's logic is spot on, but we're dealing with people who hold thousands of different beliefs. She may be right, but she's also rubbing people's noses in ideas they don't believe in. She's angered and alienated at least half the country. She's not a good example of the nursing profession.
She should have stayed home the 21 days, and continued to try and educate the public.
Now, even reasonable people find her abrasive.
Actually, she is an excellent example to the nursing community. She used EBP. She spoke her mind, and even when she was disobeying the illegal quarantine order she went out of her way to do it in places where there wasn't a lot of people to reduce the public's fear.
Conforming to mob mentality and treating someone's anxiety are totally different concepts.
Exposure therapy (excuse the pun) is sometimes the best way to treat a person's fear.
Your still missing the obvious points of this whole quarantine business. There was no need for her to be quarantined and she in no more dangerous than the healthcare workers that took of ebola patients in the U.S.
I look at most things from a nursing prospective. A hazard of the job I guess.
If I had a patient, who had an unreasonable belief or fear, what would I do?
Would I bluntly say "You're wrong, here's the science, you're being unnecessarily hysterical." Would I ignore the science and pander to their fear? Or would I try, with compassion and understanding to find a middle place?
I think Kaci's logic is spot on, but we're dealing with people who hold thousands of different beliefs. She may be right, but she's also rubbing people's noses in ideas they don't believe in. She's angered and alienated at least half the country. She's not a good example of the nursing profession.
She should have stayed home the 21 days, and continued to try and educate the public.
Now, even reasonable people find her abrasive.
she has gone where exactly? For a bike ride in a remote area in Maine where she was followed by idiot media And on her front porch where idiot media are staking out her house. There are pictures of her inside her own home sleeping taken by the media. She even said she went out the back way to avoid people. She is not on the bus or in a restaurant or showing up at children's birthday parties
She can't not be around anyone else if they don't go away.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
she has gone where exactly? For a bike ride in a remote area in Maine where she was followed by idiot media And on her front porch where idiot media are staking out her house. There are pictures of her inside her own home sleeping taken by the media. She even said she went out the back way to avoid people. She is not on the bus or in a restaurant or showing up at children's birthday parties
She can't not be around anyone else if they don't go away.
But in the eyes of the irrationally fearful she is flaunting her FREEDOM of movement and that scares them even more. They want her to shut up and stay indoors, because somehow she is "selfish" (thank Sean Hannity for that brilliant assessment).
Personally find it selfish for folks to require her unnecessary confinement because THEY are afraid and ignorant.
What the general public apparently does not realize is that there are people living in the United States who have played with Ebola and other level 4 biohazards every day for decades for a living. The folks at USAMRIID, NIH, the like. They use PPE and go through appropriate decon. They may even go bowling and ride the DC Metro as a matter of routine. No one calls for them to be quarantined.
They have been infected zero times and infected zero people. Calm down, everyone.
It's an old book, but I highly recommend everyone read 'The Hot Zone' by Richard Preston. Might clear up a few fears.
imintrouble, BSN, RN
2,406 Posts
I look at most things from a nursing prospective. A hazard of the job I guess.
If I had a patient, who had an unreasonable belief or fear, what would I do?
Would I bluntly say "You're wrong, here's the science, you're being unnecessarily hysterical." Would I ignore the science and pander to their fear? Or would I try, with compassion and understanding to find a middle place?
I think Kaci's logic is spot on, but we're dealing with people who hold thousands of different beliefs. She may be right, but she's also rubbing people's noses in ideas they don't believe in. She's angered and alienated at least half the country. She's not a good example of the nursing profession.
She should have stayed home the 21 days, and continued to try and educate the public.
Now, even reasonable people find her abrasive.