Without an isolation chamber and proper techniques that can be as dangerous as patient care.
There is the smell of ideological driven death around the CDC that even 60 Minutes cannot hide.
No “CDC guidelines” that relies on the truthfulness or voluntary cooperation of possible Ebola victims will result in anything other than infection and death.
10/26/2014 @ 9:40PM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/10/26/60-minutes-just-broke-new-details-on-the-dallas-ebola-case-heres-what-they-revealed/?
60 Minutes on Sunday told the story of a hospital tackling Ebola. A story of brave nurses and determined administrators. A story of heroes, frankly.
It was the story of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas the hospital that treated the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. A hospital thats been widely criticized, since Texas Health nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson also got sick with Ebola.
You may think you know the details of what happened in Dallas. But 60 Minutes asks you to think again.
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with four of the nurses who treated Thomas Duncan, the initial Ebola patient.
Heres what we learned.
1. Whether intentionally or not, Duncan misled authorities about his exposure to Ebola.
When Duncan first presented to the hospital on September 25, he didnt specify that hed come from Liberia or even West Africa the center of the Ebola outbreak.
Duncan only said hed returned from Africa, which couldve meant one of dozens of nations, most of them far from the Ebola outbreak. Perhaps the nurses couldve pressed him further. But with Duncans symptoms not that severe yet, and with no real reason to think he had Ebola, they sent him home.
After Duncan was re-admitted to the hospital three days later, significantly sicker, the hospital suspected Ebola might be the cause. But even then, Duncan wasnt wholly honest. He said he hadnt been exposed to anyone who was sick from Ebola, even though later reports revealed that Duncan had bravely helped carry an Ebola-infected woman to a local hospital in Liberia.
Duncan also told a nurse that hed buried his daughter who died in childbirth but he said that she hadnt died from Ebola. Duncan later denied the story to federal officials.
2. The hospital was unprepared, partly because the nation wasnt ready.
Public health officials have said this repeatedly: Nearly any hospital wouldve faced challenges if an Ebola patient unexpectedly walked through their doors. Texas Health was reportedly in the middle of Ebola training when Duncan showed up.
(There had to be a first hospital, and unfortunately for Texas Presbyterian, it was them, said Dr. Sean P. Elliott, medical director of infection prevention at the University of Arizona Health Network, told the New York Times.)
One enormous challenge, the nurses told 60 Minutes, was that protections to treat Ebola patients were initially unclear. For instance, when the nurses first treated Duncan on September 28, they were wearing gowns, masks, gloves, and face shields.
Thats seemingly plenty of protection but it still left their necks exposed. And that could be a fatal mistake when treating an Ebola patient. Its probably the reason why nurses Pham and Vinson got sick.
This lack of sufficient protection has been widely reported, and blamed on the hospital. But the nurses say they looked up protocols from the CDC, and as of late September, thats what the CDC recommended.
Scott Pelley: So the CDC protocols that you wouldve looked up the day he came into the emergency department was in your estimation deficient?
All four nurses: Yes.
Within 48 hours, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital moved to equip its staff with suits that didnt expose any skin three weeks before the CDC made that policy their new national standard.
3. The Ebola patient presented unprecedented challenges.
After the hospital confirmed that Duncan had Ebola, they had to make crucial, rapid decisions. First, they emptied the entire 24-bed medical intensive care unit to focus just on Duncan.
They also told staff that they had an Ebola patient, and they gave them the option to opt out. As a result, every staff member involved in Duncans care ended up being a volunteer from doctors to nurses to housekeepers.
Still, treating Duncan was unlike anything the care team had done before. Nurses worked two at a time, for two-hour shifts, wearing full-body protections that left them soaked in sweat under the suit.
Duncans vomit and diarrhea also presented logistical challenges; it was all hazardous waste, because anything with Duncans bodily fluids could infect someone else. And he was producing an unbelievable amount of it.
Ive been in health care for nearly 20 years, ICU nurse John Mulligan told 60 Minutes, and Ive never emptied as much trash as just from the waste of his constant diarrhea.
4. The nurses are still reeling from the experience.
The nurses who treated Duncan remain nervous. At least a few of them are still self-monitoring, because they were exposed to Nina Pham or Amber Vinson and theyre still within the 21 days window for infection.
One nurse said hes been having repeated nightmares of his coworkers getting infected and dying from Ebola.
But theyre also traumatized by the experience of treating Duncan watching the patient slip away, despite everything they did to try and save him. Duncan remains the only U.S. patient to die from Ebola.
It was the worst day of my life, Mulligan told 60 Minutes. This man that we cared for, that fought just as hard with us, lost his fight. And his family couldnt be there.
I was the last one to leave the room. And I held him in my arms. He was alone.