American nurses have neither the training, nor the experience necessary for handling patients infected with a disease as serious as Ebola arriving to hospitals and emergency rooms serviced by them, despite the training sessions covering this dangerous infection, Reuters writes.
Edward Goodman, a doctor trained in handling infectious diseases at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, has declared to have believed his hospital was trained for handling such a situation. He is now caring for the first ever Ebola infected patient discovered in the country. Despite Dr. Goodman’s beliefs, and the Ebola training received by the hospital personnel, the medical team has failed to handle the first case appropriately.
According to news reports, Thomas Eric Duncan has visited the hospital’s emergency room on September 26th, with symptoms similar to influenza. Despite telling the medical personnel of his recent travel from Liberia – a country where Ebola is currently an epidemic – the hospital staff did not keep him under observation, instead they sent him home with some antibiotics. It was not until two days later, when the patient started having more serious symptoms, that he was hospitalized with the right diagnosis. In the few days that have passed since his first visit to the hospital, the patient has come in contact with several persons, who are now under monitoring.
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Inadequate preparation for the disease to appear, along with the inadequate screening measures taken by the country’s airports, can increase the chances of Ebola to spread in the United States. If the personnel is not adequately informed about the methods necessary detect the disease in the nation’s emergency rooms, increasing the risk of a full scale epidemic. “If there are protocols in place, the nurses are not hearing them and the nurses are the ones who are exposed,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, cited by Reuters.