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Texas Ebola nurse says hospital failed her and her colleagues
MSN World News ^ | March 1 2015 | REUTERS

Posted on 03/01/2015 1:52:31 PM PST by CorporateStepsister

The first person infected with Ebola in the United States, nurse Nina Pham, said she was used for publicity purposes by her hospital, which also invaded her privacy and did not properly train her, the Dallas Morning News reported on Sunday.

Pham, 26, told the newspaper that chaos hit the Dallas hospital when it admitted Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States after he contracted it in Liberia. Nurses were ill prepared and received little guidance on how to treat Ebola or protect themselves.

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: dallas; ebola; hospital; liberia; ninapham; nurse; privacy; treatment; unitedstates
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This to me is ingratitude. The nurse got the best possible care, her dog wasn't put down right away, but kept and nurtured and then cleaned up and presented to her, but she's not grateful. Life threw her a HUGE curve-ball and the best possible scientists saved her life.
1 posted on 03/01/2015 1:52:31 PM PST by CorporateStepsister
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To: CorporateStepsister

No, Nina. Your government failed you by allowing an illegal alien infected with a deadly disease to get a visa and come to the United States and infect innocent Americans.

You got the best medical treatment because the government could not afford to have an American citizen die because of its willful endangerment to the public.

I expected this rhetoric from the black nurse. Yes, I said it. I just can’t stomach people’s bellyaching about everything and anything.


2 posted on 03/01/2015 1:59:37 PM PST by NoKoolAidforMe (I'm clinging to my God and my guns. You can keep the change.)
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To: CorporateStepsister
This hospital chain stupidly gave that illegal alien Duncan's family a million dollars for his reckless lies when entering this country and then lying to the ER staff . His actions exposed numerous hospital staff to this dangerous virus.
The hospital set a bad precedent and will be paying out for a long time.
3 posted on 03/01/2015 1:59:51 PM PST by ncalburt ( Amnesty-media out in full force)
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To: CorporateStepsister

Sorry, but I’ve seen the original recommendations provided by CDC for dealing with Ebola patients. Following their PPE recommendations would almost guarantee contracting the disease. Among other interesting things, it recommended taking off globes first and then removing the rest of your equipment with bare hands!

What they posted was a generic recommendation for how to wear PPE. Inexcusable negligence.

BTW, the nurse may have gotten the best possible care, but she became sick because of the negligence of the hospital. Heck, they could have called me and I’d have suggested better protocols than what they told these women to do!

Though it’s not like the nurses were kept isolated and unable to look up proper procedures for protecting themselves.


4 posted on 03/01/2015 2:00:38 PM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: CorporateStepsister

She should be suing the gubmint. The patient should never have been allowed into he country.


5 posted on 03/01/2015 2:00:52 PM PST by jospehm20
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To: CorporateStepsister
Life threw her a HUGE curve-ball and the best possible scientists saved her life.

The government and the 'best possible scientists' threw her a huge curve ball. Our government gave a lying immigrant a visa and those CDC scientists issues grossly incorrect procedures for handling ebola patients.

This poor girl has severe liver damage and probably other damage as well from that illness. She'll never be the same and will probably end up needing a liver transplant.

6 posted on 03/01/2015 2:08:50 PM PST by ladyjane
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To: jospehm20
she should be suing the government

I wish someone would. They've let people in the US legally from areas that had the Ebola epidemic. Then there's the ones who are here illegally. Then they brought home patients with the disease. The whole country was a lab experiment for Obama's political and social agenda.

And meanwhile we get talked down to by big brother to bully us to go get vaccines to protect us from diseases spread by invaders and because many infants are in institutionalized day care.

Maybe lawsuits against those carrying out these policies is the only way to stop the madness.

7 posted on 03/01/2015 2:10:02 PM PST by grania
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To: CorporateStepsister

Too bad this nurse wasn’t intelligent enough to do a couple of Google searches about how to protect herself.


8 posted on 03/01/2015 2:15:22 PM PST by dinodino
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

If he got a visa, which he did, then he was by defintion not an illegal alien. The visa structure and process is crazy. There are too many visa categories.

Applicants are either desireable or undesireable. That should be the first criteria.

Desireable applicants could then receive either a permanent or temporary visa. But we have a couple dozen different types of temporary visa and a couple dozen different types of permanent visas. That just encourages everyone to game the system.


9 posted on 03/01/2015 2:16:38 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

yesssss!!!


10 posted on 03/01/2015 2:19:55 PM PST by ronniesgal (Good Grief. Posting with my eyes closed and keeping my purse nearby)
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

Who was an illegal alien?


11 posted on 03/01/2015 2:20:54 PM PST by Oliviaforever
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To: dinodino

Too bad this nurse wasn’t intelligent enough to do a couple of Google searches about how to protect herself.

I would have quit and walked out, smells like the Obamanites wanted someone to get sick and push the headlines.


12 posted on 03/01/2015 2:30:02 PM PST by Gasshog (DemoKKKrats: Leaders of the Free Stuff World)
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To: NoKoolAidforMe

I think this is a result of an instinctive need to absolve the gov;t of any and all blame because so many Americans have been conditioned to think of gov’t as totally awesome and as their real savior. And so because it does not cross their mind to blame gov;t they blame the next available thing. In this case, it was the hospital.

Not to excuse this nurse’s ingratitude at all though. She definitely should have figured out that if she was gonna look to someone to be held accountable, the hospital workers and doctors who did their jobs diligently and saved her freaking life was not exactly the best place to start.


13 posted on 03/01/2015 2:31:47 PM PST by youngphys01
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To: CorporateStepsister

This will not be the end of the story.

Follow the money.


14 posted on 03/01/2015 2:33:03 PM PST by 353FMG
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To: CorporateStepsister

This will not be the end of the story.

Follow the money.


15 posted on 03/01/2015 2:33:17 PM PST by 353FMG
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To: jospehm20
She should be suing the gubmint. The patient should never have been allowed into he country.

The hospital wasn't the one at fault. This whole thing lies on hussein's doorstep for allowing every diseased ridden Anti-American turd world wonder into our country. The CDC still has no clue what they're doing. My tagline was from the CDC website and they're still clueless. Even so, if she'd bothered to go online for just one evening, she'd have known the protocol wasn't up to snuff and could have saved herself from the entire ordeal. To think of all the prayers and heartfelt wishes for her quick recovery has been slapped back at us. No, Nina, no more sympathy from here and you can kiss that nursing certificate good-bye because there isn't a hospital in the country that would risk hiring you now.

16 posted on 03/01/2015 2:33:35 PM PST by bgill (CDC site, "we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola")
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To: CorporateStepsister

Sucks to be the first one through the grinder.


17 posted on 03/01/2015 2:35:35 PM PST by Vermont Lt (When you are inclined to to buy storage boxes, but contractor bags instead.)
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To: spintreebob

Residents of Liberia need a travel visa to come to the US. Since I do not believe anything that the government or MSM says, I have no confirmation that Duncan had a valid travel visa. We were told by the MSM that he intended to come to the US to start a life. That would violate the conditions of a travel visa. He would then be an illegal alien since he clearly had to intention of going back to Liberia.

There was a time that the US would not allow people with contagious conditions to enter the US. This was to protect the general public. Those days are over. The current invasion from the southern border is proof positive of this.


18 posted on 03/01/2015 2:41:02 PM PST by NoKoolAidforMe (I'm clinging to my God and my guns. You can keep the change.)
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To: CorporateStepsister

We need to look at what is happening to our health care system. Each event in a hospital, doctor’s office or pharmacy is a “billable event”.

Government agencies like CMS define what is a billable event for Medicare, Medicaid and CHIPS. They aren’t the same. Insurance companies then start with the CMS criteria in defining what is a “billable event” for each health plan and provider.

They all have agreements with providers. So under the same “plan”, what is a billable event at one provider may not be a billable event at another provider.

The payment level is marginal ... and for medicaid flat out impossible. So the medical providers assign each “billable event” to be conducted by the lowest paid person possible.

So the minimum wage, unskilled, usually uneducated intake person at the front end has the patient fill out a form of personal medical history. The form is not designed for the reality experienced by patients. The form is designed for the reality of the government CMS.

The lowest paid, least skilled medical provider employee might also ask the patient questions and help fill out the form. Some of the questions on the form are logical impossibilities. So even the educated have problems completing the form.

The form is then filed and never looked at again. It is not a billable event for any subsequent nurse or doctor or lab technician to look at the form.

In December in the emergency room I filled out the form and listed drugs to which I’m allergic. Not a single subsequent employee knew of those allergies. Upon admission as inpatient, I had to fill out a similar form again with my medical history. That paper also was never again looked at.

On the other hand, entire groups within the hospital seemed to make it their mission to have “creative” diagnosis and “creative” treatment that would create additional billable events.

Many hospitals in poor areas are going bankrupt, especially with the expansion of Medicaid, which, as predicted is creating more unintended consequences than it is solving. The medical provider that can get creative and create a large number of billable events has a better chance to survive than a medical provider who is conscientious and does not want to “over treat” or “over medicate” the patient.

So the medical providers are incentivized to game the system.

And, of course, the patients are incentivized to game the system. Expanding medicaid has not increased preventive care, as intended. Expanding medicaid has increased Emergency room visits for non-emergency situations.

As one doctor told me last week in a long discussion of the problems of the system: “Doctors no longer over-treat due to fear of ambulance chasing lawyers. Over-Treatment is now institutionalized in the practice of medicine and taught in the medical schools.”


19 posted on 03/01/2015 2:42:05 PM PST by spintreebob
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To: CorporateStepsister
Totally disagree with you. The hospital failed on this big time.
1. They did not know how to care for an Ebola patient, and they should have requested a transfer to an Ebola facility immediately, but did not.
2. They never trained ( immediately on Duncans diagnosis)the nurses on how to deal with this pathogen. Ebola is much more contagious than any other pathogens in the hospital. The nurses had to look online to find out what to do. Where were the infection control department administrators in the hospital? This was shear, gross incompetence.
3. A hospital should always have the best interest of their staff in mind at all times. Any google research could have shown what PPE the nurses should be wearing. The hospital opted to follow the flawed instructions of the CDC, instead of using their own best judgement on how to protect their nurses.They did not want to spend the money on better equipment.
4. The nurses had no means of effectively disposing of the waste. The room next to Duncans was filled with bagged waste, and the nurses were tasked with handling the bagged waste and pouring bleach over the bags. There was no protocol on how to remove the waste. This is easily another mode of transmission.
5.The hospital videoed Nina without her permission, and released her name to the public. This is a major HIPAA violation.
6. If you get sick on the job, by law your employer has to pay your medical expenses. Why should she be grateful to the hospital? They had to provide the care to her.
I hope she wins big $$ from this hospital.
20 posted on 03/01/2015 2:48:20 PM PST by kaila
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