Nurse who survived Ebola is suing the hospital

PinayUSA · Mar 2, 2015

The hospital will settle and she will get a large settlement.

The guy who lied and exposed the hospital and the rest of the community should of been taken out , and bullet put in his head and he should of been burned once they learned he had lied.

NewYorkerGirl · Mar 2, 2015

There have been a lot of nasty comments on the internet about Nina Pham and her decision to sue. Some saying she's a gold digger and others saying that every nurse knows and accepts the risks when they enter this field, and she should just be thankful she's alive. I wonder if these same people would say this to a firefighter who was injured because he wasn't given proper equipment. I applaud her decision to sue. I think she's courageous to speak out, knowing that it will likely cost her her career. She should be compensated and other employers should take note. Nurses are not an expendable resource and we deserve to have the appropriate tools to do our jobs safely.

Hear, hear! I remember Americans being outraged about our soldiers going into a war zone with insufficient armor. Well, what happened to Nina is no different. The hospital was her warzone and Ebola was her bullet.

RNforLongTime · Mar 2, 2015

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RNforLongTime · Mar 2, 2015

Hear, hear! I remember Americans being outraged about our soldiers going into a war zone with insufficient armor. Well, what happened to Nina is no different. The hospital was her warzone and Ebola was her bullet.

yet, I don't see any of the soldiers SUING anyone, do you?

imintrouble, BSN, RN · Mar 2, 2015

If I accept an assignment I'm not qualified for, and the outcome is bad, what should happen?

If the hospital doesn't have the equipment to treat my patient, and I know the care is inadequate, what should happen to me?

There are consequences to nurses who knowingly engage in treatment that is inadequate for their patient.

Nina Pham continued to care for this patient knowing the protection was inadequate. She knew she was at risk and she proceeded anyway. She's either a better person than me, or a dumber nurse than me. Or both.

I don't care that she's suing her employer, though I believe she knew full well the danger she placed herself in.

She has bills to pay. She might be sued. There might be long term issues with the experimental drugs she took.

She volunteered to step into the room with the most dangerous disease in the world. She knew her iso equipment was inadequate. Her defense is that she didn't, but I'm crediting her with at least being as smart as me.

Anyway, she's sued and the hospital will settle. I wonder if that will start a trend?

macawake, MSN · Mar 2, 2015

The Canadian version of the CDC had posted a study about Ebola going airborne from pigs.
Reston Ebola is airborne and we should treat all Ebola as potentially airborne.

The study on pigs actually never proved that airborne transmission had in fact occurred.

There is forty years of epidemiological data and research that shows that the mode of transmission is through contact with the blood and bodily fluids of a person with a high Ebola viral load, i.e. a very sick, symptomatic person. Also large secretion droplets from an infectious person could potentially infect another person. However, it's not airborne!

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/infections-spread-by-air-or-droplets.pdf

Consider Nigeria and how the EVD outbreak was contained in that country. They had a total of 19 laboratory-confirmed cases (total of 20 suspected) and eight deaths.

WHO | Nigeria is now free of Ebola virus transmission

The Ebola virus entered Lagos on 20 July via an infected Liberian air traveller, who died 5 days later. At the departure airport, he was visibly very ill, lying on the floor of the waiting room while awaiting the flight. He vomited during the flight, on arrival and, yet again, in the private car that drove him to a private hospital. The protocol officer who escorted him later died of Ebola.

Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, has a population of 21 million! The index patient didn't infect a single person on the two flights he took from Monrovia to Lagos, despite vomiting in-flight. Not one. This certainly doesn't indicate airborne transmission. The outbreak resulted in only 19 or 20 cases in one of Africa's most populous countries.

Also, the Ebola patient in Dallas didn't infect any of his numerous family members/contacts before being hospitalized and he was already symptomatic

at that time.

MMS: Error

For some reason the link won't post. It's an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, West African Ebola Epidemic after One Year - Slowing but Not Yet under Control.

N Engl J Med 2015; 372:584-587February 5, 2015DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1414992

The case reproduction numbers (R_t ) for all three countries, averaged across all districts, have now fallen to values close to 1

The worst fears of persistent exponential growth beyond September were not realized; nevertheless, Ebola still presents a huge challenge as we move into the second year of the epidemic in West Africa.

I wish Nina Pham, Amber Vinson and all other healthcare workers across the globe who help combat this outbreak, all the best!

And to all the vicious, clueless, mean-spirited commentators on various online news outlets, I wish you a decade of chafing underwear.

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Mar 2, 2015

I don't blame Nina for filing suit. Some of her language sounds like PI lawyer speak, though. It sounds to me like a lawyer contacted her, and over time, whispered in her ear long enough to bring her to this point. I used to work for a PI lawyer and that's what they often do. They will groom a person to become angry enough to file.

One thing that bothers me about this is the privacy issue. In her interview with the Dallas newspaper, she says she was in and out and doesn't remember a lot. She says she begged the hospital not to release her name, but they did. Of course that's a HIPAA violation, no doubt. HOWEVER, I live in Dallas, and I remember distinctly that she was first identified by her family. They are the ones who supplied the first photo of her with her dog and stated what a dedicated nurse she was.

I will be very interested to see the court records and evidence that comes out with regard to HIPAA violations once the lawsuit is filed and answered in court.

At the time all this happened, I said that THR was going to need to plan to pull out their wallet and do right by the infected nurses, and I believe that is exactly what will end up happening.

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Mar 2, 2015

She deserves every penny she gets. Not only should she sue the Hospital, but she should also sue the CDC (if she is not already doing this).
The Canadian version of the CDC had posted a study about Ebola going airborne from pigs.
Reston Ebola is airborne and we should treat all Ebola as potentially airborne.

First of all, the authors of that study did NOT conclude that the virus was spread via the airborne route. Secondly, one of the authors of that study did a follow up study to see if he could replicate the results. THIS TIME, they controlled for the possibility that ebola had been spread from cage to cage via contamination while being cages were being cleaned vs. airborne. The monkeys in the other cage were not infected this time.

Here is a nice discussion of these two studies:

Airborne Ebola: A Flight of Fancy

Nurses should not be insinuating that ebola is airborne. The infection patterns in Africa have proved this. The events in the US reinforces this. If ebola were airborne, Mr. Duncan would have infected MANY people, as he came into contact with almost 50 people AFTER he was visibly ill and infected NONE of them. Amber Vinson traveled on an airplane while symptomatic and infected NO ONE. Yes, while in close contact with an ebola patient, a nurse should be fully protected as if she were caring for an airborne disease, because she is so close to the patient that she can easily come into contact with droplets and aerosols. That is does NOT make it an airborne disease and we need to be careful not to confuse lay people with how we phrase things.

Watch this little video on how an airborne disease travels in a place like an airplane:

Sneeze on a plane: A chance of getting the measles 02:42

Measles cases in California soar - CNN.com

APRN., DNP, RN, APRN, NP · Mar 2, 2015

If she does get compensated, I hope it's only for the amount of her medical bills/furnishing her apartment and future medical expenses (I read somewhere that her medical expenses from THR/NIH were taken care of & she didn't have to pay for anything). It doesn't surprise me that THR was not ready. With the exception of a few hospitals, the US was not prepared for Ebola. Nina needs to understand that outside of Emory & the NIH, THR was the first hospital to handle an Ebola case. They gave her the best care possible and then was sent to the NIH for further treatment. The CDC is more at fault here than THR. They're the ones who set the guidelines we have to follow. She should be going after the CDC for not prepping THR or any other hospital for Ebola.
I'm pretty sure it is her lawyer, Charla Aldous, who contacted her first and not Nina. It's payday for Charla and her firm. If they do go to court and Nina wins great. If they lose, what's Nina going to do without a job? No hospital in the area would want her for fear of a lawsuit. I hope they settle this outside of court.

You sound like someone who has a vested interest in Texas Health......

OCNRN63, RN · Mar 2, 2015

She deserves to win an enormous settlement -- she went to work one day, took care of the patients assigned to her with the equipment provided and ended up contracting ebola. Then her requests for privacy were ignored and she was at the center of a media storm for weeks. We all read about how her apartment was "cleaned out" and her things destroyed, the threat of destroying her dog due to fear that he might be contagious, and about her diagnosis and condition. Her name and picture were associated with ebola in the United States and plastered over television, magazines, newspapers and the internet. Her employer owes her more than the paycheck they're still giving her. She faces ongoing fears of organ damage and further health concerns. I cannot imagine how anyone -- especially a nurse -- could say she doesn't deserve to sue and win.

Never underestimate the ability of nurses to lack compassion for their own.

OCNRN63, RN · Mar 2, 2015

The hospital will settle and she will get a large settlement.
The guy who lied and exposed the hospital and the rest of the community should of been taken out , and bullet put in his head and he should of been burned once they learned he had lied.

Since you're not a nurse, I have to wonder at the virulence of your response.

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · Mar 2, 2015

Reston Ebola is airborne and we should treat all Ebola as potentially airborne.

One problem: Ebola Reston does not affect humans to any great extent. They was one cause of a contaminated worker that fell ill, but the symptomology was not consistent with Ebola and the worker recovered fully. So while Ebola Reston is airbourne and quite fatal to monkeys, it has little risk for humans.

I have not seen any reliable reproduceable studies that confirm that the Ebola strains that affect humans are airbourne.