Liberia: Nurses Abandoned Redemption Hospital

Nurses COVID

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Liberia: Nurses Abandoned Redemption Hospital

The Ebola Virus outbreak is terrifying, I realize Liberia is far from home for most of us, but it most certainly can be transmitted anywhere.

"The Redemption Hospital workers said their colleague died after apparently coming in contact with an Ebola suspect due to the lack of protective materials."

Easily transmitted with a 90 % death rate.

Protective gear or not, I could not provide care to Ebola victims.

How about you?

Specializes in ICU.

Ebola is actually not that easy to catch. A lot of its transmission is because of death rituals in Africa. I don't have a source handy - maybe check The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, written about Ebola, which I read a while back and found fascinating - but some cultures clean out dead bodies manually. I mean they stick their ungloved, uncovered arm up a person's rectum and remove material that they have found therein. Everybody touches the deceased at funerals, and they also have a communal bowl for every single person who attends the funeral to wash their hands in... Much like many other bloodborne or mucous to mucous diseases, Ebola requires blood or bodily fluid contact. As long as you don't have a giant open wound in your hand and touch blood, you don't stick yourself with a needle you just stuck your Ebola patient with, or nobody with Ebola throws up into your mouth, if you are taking care of a patient with Ebola the likelihood of you catching it is low. It wouldn't bother me too much to take care of a patient with Ebola. It's a lot easier to catch TB, or heaven forbid, smallpox if someone ever sabotages the stocks of it we have (check The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston for that one).

Of course, this is all dependent on having appropriate PPE. If I was working at a hospital like this Liberian one that didn't provide PPE, I wouldn't take care of the patients either.

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Specializes in ICU.

I never thought I would take care of HIV patients, but I do. Personally, I don't trust protective gear too much! Yeah, I would have to use the best protective gear available, and would need to by highly paid. Thought provoking, tho; we recently had anthrax exposure. All it takes is one incompetent healthcare worker, I guess.....

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Might be all ready exposed and running would just be spreading it.

With the proper protections, I would stay.

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I would not take the risk of carrying it home to my family.

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Specializes in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

As long as the proper PPE were available, I would not have a problem with it. As it was mentioned before, it's really not that easy to catch. On the other hand, I don't know I could really deal with myself abandoning pts like that but "defensive nursing" is the best strategy. I would probably attempt to secure proper protective gear for myself and my coworkers if however possible in order to keep working and maybe, just maybe, help prevent the spread. In Liberia, though, I know that must be like trying to polish a dog turd into a gold bar. :no: It just can't be done. But, nurses are known for their ingenuity when it comes to being a in a pinch.

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Specializes in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

Thank you for posting this!

I actually had been going through the Marburg Ebola VHF last night on an infectious disease app I got earlier in the day. It mentioned how implementing standard precautions prevents the spread of the virus and this manual also notes that, once health care workers started implementing these precautions themselves, no additional instances of pt-to-HCW transmission were documented (keeping in mind that prior to this 25% of those that died were health care workers). I remember seeing this on the news in 1995 when I was 10 and being really frightened -- I thought that this must be hell as much as I could fathom in my limited capacity. Now, however, this makes me feel a little braver in dealing with pts who have infectious diseases overall.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

The hospital ward....

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How many of us would refuse to work anywhere without PPE, even without the threat of Ebola?? I would not take a job in the first place, without PPE.

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I guess it's a lot easier to catch then previously reported in this thread.

SCARY.

I was just being honest... it's not something I would sign up to do just yet, even with PPE.

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I was just being honest... it's not something I would sign up to do just yet, even with PPE.

Heck, I don't blame you. I was reading about it and it IS scary. You're dead within 10 days from onset of symptoms and it's a horrible way to die.

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