Last night I read that the CDC is planning to transport at least one American Citizen with the ebola virus to Atlanta for treatment. Driving around today my car radio kept assaulting me with experts soothingly asserting that there is no reason for the American population to fear exposure to the virus. To a man they all went on to say that only healthcare workers were likely to be exposed.
If you're a healthcare worker raise your hand. Are you angry? Do you feel like you're being considered expendable? Less than fully human? Are you worried?
I don't favor deliberately bringing ANY known infected person across the ocean to this continent. OK, Ebola is not all that easy to contract. It's a lot harder to contract if it is thousands of miles away.
The virus is spread by contact with infected body fluids. So lets say a nurses aid in a hospital comes in contact with those body fluids (diarrhea, emesis, blood, whatever. Accidents happen even if you take precautions.) What is to stop her from spreading the virus to her husband or child? What is to stop a child infected in this way from spreading it within his classroom?
I have always been able to deal with the concept of ebola by reminding myself that it exists on another continent. Perhaps I'm being selfish, but I believe that anyone sickened in Africa should be treated in Africa. We don't need to help diseases spread around the globe any more than we already do.
NIMBY. In this case, NIMBY. I'm not a NIMBY kind of girl, but this terrifies me.
What do you think? What would you do if you were assigned a patient know to be infected with Ebola?
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Are they really choosing random staff to take care of an ebola patient? Per their statement they have specially trained staff so I would guess they have had practice with the isolation procedures and possibly signed up to be able to care for these patients if the need arose. And in that case, I would do what I signed up to do.[/quote']
absolutely right. It's not like they are just moving them into a random isolation room. Staff have specifically trained for this. It us foolish to think we will never have an undetected Ebola patient someday crossing our borders. We must be prepared.
I highly doubt this is the first time the virus has been brought to the US (I would bet money that the CDC and/or companies working on a vaccine have been studying the virus using, I don't know, the virus to study), but that it is the first time someone with active ebola has intentionally been brought to the US.
It's interesting to see all the uproar over this when the plan is seemingly well controlled (contained space for transport from Africa to Atlanta, and then a specific isolation unit in a hospital). I say interesting because this week a large Level 1 trauma center shut down their ER because of suspected ebola. As it would turn out the patient had malaria and not ebola, but that potential raised the concern over just how many people had been exposed to this person in a very uncontrolled fashion prior to their arrival in the ER.
Along the lines of that type of exposure - we have no idea how many people flying from one place to another (just using this as an example) may have something infectious and communicable. Diseases we had nearly eradicated that are returning. There are going to be diseases, it is part of life and something we have much closer contact with in healthcare. I can understand people feeling like 'not in my back yard'...and/or having serious concerns over taking care of patients with diseases like ebola, but it is part of healthcare. What makes you so certain you haven't been exposed to something similar, as bad or worse and simply don't know it? It happens, even in healthcare.
In life there are risks. Risks exist in every behavior we have. The chances of being in a fatal car accident on the way to or from work (or to the store, or out to dinner, or really anywhere) are significantly higher than getting exposed to and contracting something like ebola. Are people going to stop going places because of the risk of death in an accident?
So what is the answer? We refuse to allow these US citizens to return home for medical treatment? If these individuals had experienced say a hemorrhagic stroke or MI - would we dream of saying they should not be returned to the US for treatment? Do we stop all travel, ban everyone from traveling by land, sea or air? Just because something bad might happen? It sounds kind of crazy to me. Seems highly impractical to me.
I highly doubt this is the first time the virus has been brought to the US (I would bet money that the CDC and/or companies working on a vaccine have been studying the virus using, I don't know, the virus to study), but that it is the first time someone with active ebola has intentionally been brought to the US.
It's interesting to see all the uproar over this when the plan is seemingly well controlled (contained space for transport from Africa to Atlanta, and then a specific isolation unit in a hospital). I say interesting because this week a large Level 1 trauma center shut down their ER because of suspected ebola. As it would turn out the patient had malaria and not ebola, but that potential raised the concern over just how many people had been exposed to this person in a very uncontrolled fashion prior to their arrival in the ER.
Along the lines of that type of exposure - we have no idea how many people flying from one place to another (just using this as an example) may have something infectious and communicable. Diseases we had nearly eradicated that are returning. There are going to be diseases, it is part of life and something we have much closer contact with in healthcare. I can understand people feeling like 'not in my back yard'...and/or having serious concerns over taking care of patients with diseases like ebola, but it is part of healthcare. What makes you so certain you haven't been exposed to something similar, as bad or worse and simply don't know it? It happens, even in healthcare.
In life there are risks. Risks exist in every behavior we have. The chances of being in a fatal car accident on the way to or from work (or to the store, or out to dinner, or really anywhere) are significantly higher than getting exposed to and contracting something like ebola. Are people going to stop going places because of the risk of death in an accident?
So what is the answer? We refuse to allow these US citizens to return home for medical treatment? If these individuals had experienced say a hemorrhagic stroke or MI - would we dream of saying they should not be returned to the US for treatment? Do we stop all travel, ban everyone from traveling by land, sea or air? Just because something bad might happen? It sounds kind of crazy to me. Seems highly impractical to me.
Well said.
I would sign up to take care of the
pts; I have been exposed to so much infectious diseases that require supportive treatment, this one isn't really that much different, in my perspective.
I feel no more expendable than during the SARS epidemic, or when MERS arrived on these shores. And ebola is much less communicable than those illnesses.
Why would it make me feel less than fully human? Do soldiers feel less than human when they get deployed to Afghanistan to do their job? When a nurse goes into this career field, taking care of the critically ill comes with the territory.
When AIDs first reared its' ugle head, healthcare workers went into a panic. Teachers and parents freaked out over the possibility of a child coming to school with it. And something called "Universal Precautions" started being used.
This pt is going into a secured isolation situation, where they have scientists and workers trained to handle worse things than Ebola. I have actually seen the care that they take, handling microbial agents. I am not that worried,
I am more worried about travelers that might hide the disease in order to get back to the US
I must preface my comments by saying that it is a whole lot easier to hold the views I am about to express since I am a good distance from Atlanta and I am not caring for this gentleman...
So this individual is known to have Ebola. He is being flown on a private plane, and, I deduce, immediately put into "quarantine" when he arrives. This scares me a whole lot less than someone who contracts Ebola, walks onto a commercial plane in Africa, flies to the US, enters the crowded terminal at JFK, and then walks out in to the public--and then subsequently becomes symptomatic after he/she had contact with who knows how many here in the US. We are in control in the former…in the latter, there is no control.
In addition, this worker who suffers from Ebola is, I presume, going to be treated on a unit that is used to dealing with high risk situations. This unit is not staffed with workers who take short cuts with isolation procedures. Also, they know they are dealing with a patient who has Ebola (!), not a patient who tested positive for MRSA 7 years ago--and they are going to take proper precautions.
Finally--and others have said something similar already--when I am in triage, a person with multi-drug resistant Tb could walk in and cough all over me before I even had a clue that I need to protect myself. What's to say that the pt. who is Hep C positive will not filch when I put that IV in--and I end up with a very dirty needle stick? I certainly don't feel like I am putting life on the line each time I go to work, but there are risks, I know them…I still show up for the job!
AIDS showed up here. AIDS was here. We didn't bring it here.
The movement of humans around the globe has caused so many problems - rabbits and cane toads in Australia, all of the invasive plants and animals in North America that have killed out some of the native flora, zebra mussels in the Great Lakes region; lionfish in the Caribbean and on the East coast of the USA. All of the living organisms that we carry with us in our travels move into biological niches where they do not belong and disrupt the balance of nature. We create pandemics by moving around. Ebola is bound to show up here sooner or later. Do we have to help it? (And yes, I know it is not airborn.)
I think you are selfish and I can't believe that you are a nurse. This is probably why the healthcare system is so screwed because of healthcare providers with your mentality. Did you get into nursing for the money?
I think you are selfish and I can't believe that you are a nurse. This is probably why the healthcare system is so screwed because of healthcare providers with your mentality. Did you get into nursing for the money?
I think this is a mistake. There is so much we still do not know about the Ebola virus. The doctor who contracted it was known to take up to thirty minutes painstakingly donning his PPE prior to patient contact. He does not know how he contracted it. Ebola is highly infectious. My understanding is that it takes only one viron to cause infection, and that although it is not airborne (yet), respiratory droplets are infectious.
Showing up for work knowing that I will care for people with infectious diseases is one thing, and it is a choice I make. But to actually knowingly bring such a virulent pathogen with such a high mortality rate across international borders just seems like a really bad idea to me.
I do not trust all the smooth reassurance that "we have nothing to worry about". How many times has the American public been lied to?
Would I knowingly care for a person infected with Ebola? That's a really huge hypothetical since, for me, I do not work inpatient. I work in Emergency, and we see people with unknown diagnoses all the time. If the virus began to spread and we were seeing people present to emergency departments with the virus, I might actually take some time off and stay home in my little cabin in the woods with my food stockpile and shotgun.
Before reading everyone's comments, I wanted to give a comment to the OP.
What the media is doing, is trying to prevent the public from freaking out. Down playing the risks to the people on the streets, buses, planes, malls, etc. Trying to paint a picture that the only US Persons that will be 'exposed', are the medical personal that is working directly with the patient.
This in no way means that medical persons are expendable. It's about controlling the message.
MrChicagoRN, RN
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