The CDC guidelines have NOT BEEN ADEQUATE!
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/ppe-poster.pdf[link:
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/pdf/ppe-poster.pdf|
It is very difficult to remove the second glove with a bare hand because that still dirty second glove overlaps the still dirty cuff of your gown.
Then, using your BARE hands you are supposed to remove your own gown by reaching behind you. This assumes that no one ever gets contaminated on their back side!
And on and on! This is NOT adequate PPE.
I worked in a hospital lab as an assistant and phlebotomist. We rarely took extra precautions when we saw a patient (normal cover was a disposable lab coat over our scrubs and gloves when dealing with patient). Extra precautions were not part of our daily routine. When we (rarely) saw a patient presenting with possible tuberculosis, we'd all get that "I'm doing this correctly? Right?" look when donning our PPEs (personnel protective equipment) and then removing them.
People are assuming that medical personnel are accustomed to suiting up and then removing their PPE , but with exceptions of surgical personnel (who suit up to protect the patient more than themselves and generally just "yank" off their gown and gloves), most medical staff rarely wear and then REMOVE PROPERLY the level of PPE required for diseases like ebola.
Yesterday on CNN the spokesperson for the nurses' union was pleading for more training for nurses around the country. Their polling suggesting that the majority of nurses in this country do not feel adequately trained to handle ebola patients.
Hospital personnel working with ebola patients need an immediate upgrade to better PPEs and need to learn to work on the buddy system to remove them, imo.
This is not a "Texas" problem" or a "Dallas Presbyterian Hospital" problem. Mistakes have been made (like sending Mr. Duncan home the first time), but this is a country wide problem of nurses not being adequately trained and and not having periodic drills on how to deal with this type of situation, imo.
The problem lies with the CDC guidelines as well as the "bottom line" hospitals, imo. And for the record, Dallas Presbyterian is a teaching hospital, where one of my kids did her nursing school clinicals. It is considered a good hospital, and is probably as good or better than most hospitals in the U.S.
