A patient came to the small hospital I work at (100 beds) late one night with vomiting and diarrhea. He had come from west Africa 2 weeks before where he travels frequently in relation to his work. The ED would not let him in the ER for several hours while they tried to get the ambulance to take him to Phoenix. There was a lot of communication between the chief medical officer, doctor and someone in Phoenix- probably an arm of CDC or infectious diseases.
Eventually, he was allowed in the ED and was treated (at first with appropriate PPE) until someone determined he didn't have ebola. He was admitted to my med/surg floor at midnight. There was no order for isolation, he was put in a regular room and there was no communication to the nurse assigned to care for him regarding the process that was used to determine he didn't have ebola or some other infectious disease. The nurse was just supposed to take the ED nurses assurance(via the doctors) that he did not have ebola or some other contagious illness.
his upset many of the nurses working that night because he wasn't even tested for ebola (we are aware results would not have been instantaneous), and there was NO COMMUNICATION to the nurses caring for him about what assurances they would have that he was not contagious. Some of us are very upset with the way our hospital handled this and I wonder what RIGHTS I have as a nurse to protect myself. I felt very bad for this pt because it took a long time for us to decide how to approach his room (we don't have the proper PPE for ebola on the floors), but at the same time I do not feel I should expose myself to something potentially deadly without being properly taught how to protect myself).
The only people at our hospital trained for this were ED nurses, ICU nurses on a different campus and the engineering dept (I don't understand that). In his chart there was no mention of potential for ebola (which I think was intentional); only that he had recently been in West Africa. Can someone out there tell me what my rights are as a nurse, what I can do to address this and what the hospital should have done? (Besides communicate a lot more effectively, I'm sure) I hate to say this but I think if this had happened during the earlier hours the nurses would have been given a lot more information and the communication would have been handled a lot better.
