I presume that most urban hospitals are beginning to form contingency plans for how to react when a possible or suspected Ebola case arrives in triage... though these plans may reveal the Emporer to be stark naked.
Our hospital sent out an e-mail that seeks to assure us that a plan is in place to safely handle this situation but it's long on platitudes and short on details...
It fails to address the simplest of considerations like the fact that we have no toilets in our rooms and only a few restrooms throughout the entire department... for patients who typically produce large amounts of infectious diarrhea.
It fails to consider that the gloves we have tear on a fairly regular basis... perhaps 7% or so.
It fails to offer a detailed plan to for donning and doffing PPE in a decon zone to prevent cross contamination.
It fails to address how potential contacts will be monitored nor the options for quarantine.
It doesn't consider the issue of visitors nor what will happen if the patient decides to leave for some reason.
It's almost as though we're told, "Not to worry... we have a master plan that will be enacted as needed" when said plan is actually just a single page listing the name and number of the infectious disease fellow.
The probability of such a patient is pretty low but the potential severity is very high.
Just curious... Does your ED have a robust and realistic plan for how to cope with the arrival of a possible Ebola patient?
I think if ebola really begins to spread in the U.S. we need to have free standing ebola clinics or even free standing emergency room/hospital ebola clinics that are not attached to the main hospitals. This would help keep pregnant women, babies, children, elderly and anyone with low immune systems etc from being so at risk.
It seems that the pregnant women cases I have been reading about in Africa are really a sad affair. The mothers bleed to death after delivery, the babies are born early and dead etc. Especially horrifying. Ebola really needs to be in a whole separate building instead of inside the general hospitals.
Specializes in All areas of Critical Care, ED, PACU, Pre-Op, BH,.
We will NOT have enough special rooms in our country to treat these Ebola cases. Does any of our officials realize this? This is going to get worse. Also they keep comparing us to the Doctors without borders. Do they also put those patients on ventilators and dialize them? That makes the risk of exposure so much greater!
NickiLaughs, ADN, BSN, RN
2,387 Posts
Since when does the doctor read patient charts?