Posted on 10/14/2014 5:52:48 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
This is the CDC procedure for donning and doffing personal protective equipment (PPE) specifically for ebola found here.
Since the PPE doesn’t require double gloves, the recommended procedure is to remove your gloves, then your gown, then face stuff. Once you remove your gloves, you’re touching your dirty gown, your mask, face shield with bare hands. It says to use a hand sanitizer to wash your hands down if you’re hands are dirty......This is stupid.
Anybody checked DuPont's stock lately? Looks like they're going to sell a lot of Tyvek.
If you read my original post, you'll note the criticism for not requiring double gloving.
I say he’s in over his head. He is making it perfectly clear he has no idea what he is talking about. His advice will get people killed.
The answer is basically zero.
The Doctors in Africa have repeatedly noted that once the uncontrollable bleeding starts, the patients die.
There is no point in continuing treatment once this stage has been reached, and the risk of infecting the caregivers jumps with each additional hour.
Time to let 'em go.
You make a very important point. Hospitals are not going to voluntarily exceed the CDC protocols for ebola, especially when it costs them thousands per hazmat suit. They already will be absorbing the costs of voluntarily closing units, re-working patient flows, setting up more isolation and decontamination areas, etc.
Nurses will be put in the position of refusing to accept an assignment because they do not have the proper equipment to protect themselves. This is a serious ethical dilemma in the real world of nursing. The way it works is when one nurse refuses, another will accept, maybe because of inexperience, lack of assertiveness or guilt over putting ones life above another’s. It will be terrible. Many will just not come to work again.
Mrs. AV
Yes, your points were spot on.
So it’s true. The cleanup crews must wear yellow hazmat spacesuits while the folks treating the patient,in contact with ebola infested body fluids, only need to wear cotton gowns, paper masks, and tennis shoes. I, an average human without medical training, can tell you how the nurse got ebola. She came in contact with the patient’s body fluid via her hair, neck, tennis shoes, or gown. Those in contact with the ebola patient should be wearing a water proof full body suit that can be washed down with bleach before removal.
Hair is porous and scalp is skin. And as for no shoe cover, what is being tracked to other areas of unit or out to public. So the big CDC guy says they don’t need to be covered?! Total criminal jerk.
Who wants to bet that poster is scrubbed overnight?
Tort will sort all this out.
Particularly if the uncovered shoes track ebola laden grossness outside of the unit and into the outside world somewhere.
Grab it. Just because.
I wonder if Nurse Pham and others didn’t re-use the suits over and over. They could have had them hanging up and whenever they went to Duncan’s room they just grabbed one off the rack.
Not to seem like I’m sticking up for the cdc, but what they say to do is pull the gown forward so the back ties break, then touching the outside of gown with gloved hands, pull it down so it begins to be inside out. Then you can continue to peel it off so that you are only touching the inside of everything. Even the gloves end up inside out.
Mrs. AV
But there’s no way to take off the face shield or mask without taking your gloves off first unless you touch your hair/head with contaminated gloves.
We have the protocols and they are ridiculous. WE are developing our own more stringent protocols.
What if the patient coughs or vomits while you are tending to him? Sprays body fluid on your hair, neck, and/or tennis shoes. Now what do you do?
Uh, no.
A person would have to have a death wish to do such a thing.
Do you have any idea what these nurses were dealing with?
Obviously not, or you would not ask such a question.
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