<p>@Nrdsb4 - My comment was a general one and not in response to any particular post. I was responding to the general idea that his family might sue for some kind of malpractice or wrongful death. </p>
<p>This is insanity - pointing fingers at nurses, doctors and hospitals that had absolutely no experience with the Ebola virus until the day Duncan walked in the door. The hospital had just gotten directives on Ebola training, but miraculously protocols should have been in place to identify a disease that has symptoms identical to the common flu. It’s easy for us sitting in the safety of our own homes to say what the hospital should have known.</p>
<p>Let me tell you who I feel for - the medical professionals in this country who will be expected to put their own lives on the line to make sure that rest of us are safe. If this disease does spread it is these people and institutions, who we now talk of suing, that we all be depending on. Let this family sue the Liberian government for not having protocols in place. Honestly, the world and indeed some of our own citizens have come to believe that the U.S. has a responsibility to solve and pay for the problems of the world. We do more than our fair share, yet the generosity of spirit shown by our country is often taken for granted and exploited to the detriment of our own citizens. </p>
<p>I think given that our medical system has no prior experience with this disease, we are doing the best that we possibly can with treatment. </p>
<p>Let’s for argument’s sake assume that this guy is one of those deputies.</p>
<p>1)Has he been monitored twice a day by CDC?
2)If not, why not?
3)If so, why would he not call his CDC contact to say he felt ill, and wait for an ambulance (with people who are properly protected with PPG) rather than walking into a MINOR EMERGENCY clinic for something which would require hospitalization and special procedures.
4)There seems to be either a lack of education given to potential contacts, or someone has chosen to ignore that teaching.</p>
<p>5)This is a false alarm.</p>
<p>The CDC said he was not someone who had been identified as a contact. I 'm hoping for number 5 but they are making a really big deal. The have evacuated the clinic and sealed off his SUV with police tape in the parking lot. He’s at Texas Pres Hospital now complaining of stomach issues.</p>
<p>His family says the CDC told them there is no chance it’s Ebola but they are exercising an abundance of caution. No testing has been done, yet.</p>
<p>This is the latest coming out of the local news:</p>
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<p>Hoping this guy just has some kind of typical stomach bug and nothing more.</p>
<p>I’m guessing the earliest they’ll have test results back on this deputy is tonight, with tomorrow being more likely.</p>
<p>It’s not out of the realm of possibility that this guy has been at home worrying about the fact that he entered that apartment sans PPG. No one could blame him if he got pretty worried after he began feeling not so hot. There are always little stomach viruses circulating about, but if you’d recently walked in his shoes, it might throw you for a big loop to start feeling icky days later.</p>
<p>Really crossing my fingers this turns out to be nothing serious.</p>
<p>Unless the details of the report given by the reporter in Liberia who was interviewed by Anderson Cooper prove to be false, no one is going to be able to successfully maintain that Duncan must have known he had been exposed. </p>
<p>Unless, of course, they get a jury that has already made up its mind.</p>
<p>If this deputy was actually in the apartment and thought he might have Ebola when he sought help, what in the name of all that’s holy could have possessed him to go to a walk-in clinic?!? I devoutly hope it is a false alarm.</p>
<p>Really, this shows that people just have not gotten the message. It’s mind-boggling.</p>
<p>BTW, for anyone who is interested in the medical profession and the ways people within it have tried to improve results by developing procedures and checklists, I suggest reading Atul Gowande’s book Better. It’s a fascinating read.</p>
<p>What IS the message, though? He was not on the watch list so was not being tracked and provided with particulars. People have been told that it is very difficult to contract and one must come into direct contact with body fluids. If he is ambulatory, running a low temp and feeling some abdominal discomfort but not at the fluids stage the message has been that he would not be risking exposure to others. Is there an “I think I have Ebola” hot line to call?</p>
<p>^^^This wasn’t just any Joe Schmo. He knew he had been in that apartment without PPG. So when he began feeling ill, the proper course would have been to call one of his superiors, or the CDC, and let them know. Or 911: “Hello, my name is Mr. Jones and I am feeling ill. I’m not deathly ill but I want to make it known that I was in the apartment of a known ebola victim and I fear I may have contracted the illness.” Or called his local ER, “My name is Mr. Jones, (repeat speech from above) and I wanted to let you know I am on my way in, so please know that and be prepared.”</p>
<p>If this guy actually does have Ebola than it must be easier to catch than as been reported and it’ll be a whopper of a workman’s comp claim. I’m praying that he doesn’t have it.</p>
<p>Apparently they will be taking temps at the airports with “laser thermometers,” which do not make any physical contact whatsoever with the person’s body. Pretty cool; I had neither seen one nor even heard of them. AT my facilities we use the one which you slide over the forehead with a removable probe (which is ejected with a button rather than having to touch it).</p>
<p>Great that they got a hi-tech thermometer. It still doesn’t address the real issue that checking for fever alone, whether using a dumb thermometer or a laser one, won’t identify people carrying the virus and not showing symptoms. It is easy enough to bring down the fever by taking tylenol or iboflabin. Somehow, I feel more helpless after CDC announced this new measure than before. Is this the tightened screening method the prez issued the other day to protect country from Ebola after Duncan case? We already know it wouldn’t have stopped Duncan.</p>
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<p>It is the reality of the country and times we live in that there will be lawsuits. The family have already made statements which could lead one to believe that suing is something that will eventually creep into their conversations. If they haven’t already been contacted by PI lawyers, it won’t be long. </p>
<p>The hospital has already admitted it made a big mistake. They know they deserve some criticism and they knew it was coming before the first press conference. As I said in an earlier post, I’m done with focusing on that mistake, but it would be naive to believe all the lawyers out there or others who have been directly impacted by those two days which we can’t get back feel the same.</p>
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<p>I was mainly oohing and ahhing over a cool new instrument rather than making any statements about its ability to impact the global issue at hand. I’m a nurse, I get to do that.</p>
<p>I wonder what electronic records software the hospital uses? Was the hospital blaming the missed Ebola connection on the records software?</p>
<p>Are you talking about Duncan? On Friday the hospital said that the nurses and doctors have separate systems, and the doctors somehow missed the nurse’s note that he’d been to Liberia. But overnight on Friday they retracted that, and have given no further explanation</p>
<p>At one of the facilities where I work, we have various electronic “notes” in each patient’s chart. We have a nurse pre-op assessment, the physician procedure note, the CRNA procedure, the post procedure nurse’s note,etc. You get the gist. Anyone who is part of the healthcare team can access any of those notes with a click of the mouse. I don’t KNOW, but suspect that the triage nurse note was there for the doctor at the click of a mouse had he so chosen. I suspect he didn’t even look at it. </p>
<p>At the same time, I’ve also said that if I were the triage nurse who saw a symptomatic patient who claimed to have just arrived from Liberia, I would have been out of my chair like a rocket to inform the doctor and make sure an isolation room was being readied in order to RULE OUT EBOLA. </p>
<p>I don’t think this was a screw up by any particular individual; I suspect it was a joint venture fail. JMO and I don’t know any of this for a fact.</p>
<p>For many obvious reasons, I really hope that this Frisco man does not have Ebola. If he does that means that the information being given out about transmission of the disease is wrong. He didn’t have any contact with Mr. Duncan, just with Duncan’s relatives and the apartment where he stayed. It may be easier to catch Ebola from surfaces than CDC has led us to believe. </p>
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That’s the thing. Even if your job is technically “to write the stuff down”, there has to be more to it than that. If it registered in your mind that a patient might have a horrible, contagious illness, you would have to react to that in some way, even if it were to put a mask on YOURSELF. </p>
<p>I can imagine a lot of scenarios where the triage nurse would be compelled to do more than just duly note it in some medical notes.</p>