If she was following prescribed protocols to the letter, then she could not have gotten Ebola. So it is pretty clear that either the PPE was breached (which she would have noticed) or she was *not* following standard protocols as described by CDC and others. It could be that the hospital did not properly teach her--in that case, she would not have been using proper procedure, but a portion of blame would fall on the hospital.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the descriptions of her PPE indicates that she was wearing level 2 PPE, not level 4. That is a breach of standard protocol.
Understanding what went wrong is crucial to preventing similar incidents in the future. Accident analysis is not done to "blame the victim"--rather, it is a crucial component of accident avoidance. People who work in safety and risk management do these analyses all the time. There are whole websites devoted to them.
You are working on the assumption that the CDC protocol is correct. I, for one, question that assumption.
If it were one incident, then perhaps the protocol was correct and somebody really screwed up. Two incidents in less than two weeks, indicates the screw-up is the CDC author(s) of the protocol. A protocol which requires people to be perfect and make zero mistakes, is a bad protocol.
The CDC protocol, in this case, was that Level-2 procedures would be OK in a hospital setting when dealing with Ebola patients. It is looking increasingly likely that this is incorrect, and that more rigorous protection procedures need to be used, involving full-body coverage with no skin or hair exposed, probably two or more layers of protection, and thorough washing and spraying of the suit with disinfectant before removal.
“If she was following prescribed protocols to the letter, then she could not have gotten Ebola.”
The point is that you do NOT know that. And neither does the CDC and for them to make such a statement based on ASSUMPTIONS, NOT fact is highly disturbing. There could be flaws in the protocol.
“As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the descriptions of her PPE indicates that she was wearing level 2 PPE, not level 4. That is a breach of standard protocol.”
Except that on the CDC page:
Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations for Hospitalized Patients with Known or Suspected Ebola Virus Disease in U.S. Hospitals
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/infection-prevention-and-control-recommendations.html
They describe Level 2 protocol, NOT level 4.
See my post 37 and PapaBear3625’s post 61 on this thread.