Community Chat

[pitdakota]

Marp, in my experience teaching nursing students and in my experience as a nurse....the most difficult thing is removing the cap, face shield or googles, and mask.

You have to be very diligent during that time. Actually removing the gown and gloves is the easiest part. Once you get the trick of how to remove the gloves so that they are inside out, it isn't hard at all.

That jives with the docs I know that done tours treating Ebola say as well. The decontamination area is where they have to be very careful. It is a high risk area. And removing things from the head and face is what you have to be very careful with.

[Marp2]

Thanks Pit. I was relating the gloves to problems I have removing the ones I use when preparing particular foods. I was especially struck by the ""slide the fingers of the ungloved hand"" as that is always where I mess up. I now wash my hands with the gloves on before I try to remove them or I inevitably get whatever on me. Then again I'm a natural born klutz LOL.

[pitdakota]

It takes some practice.

Not to make light of it, but the hardest dang thing to do is for surgical nurses learning to gown and glove by themselves!! The docs have the nurse or scrub tech to do that for them.

After completing the scrub, you have to approach your pack, lightly pick up the towel. Dry. Then you have the gown to put on keeping it sterile. No problem. Now however....comes the gloves!

Oh my word. Think about having to use the cuff of the gown to pick the glove up with. Any surgical nurse or scrub tech can tell all kinds of stories about learning how to do this successfully. But once you learn it, you wonder what was so hard about it in the first place? lol

I will never forget practicing that over and over when I first started out in surgery!

[Marp2]

Pit, I was just reading an article and thought you might get a kick out of this excerpt:

Frieden said state and federal health officials are re-examining those protocols, including the removal of protective gear after contact with an Ebola patient and if it might be helpful to spray virus-killing solution on workers as they leave an isolation unit. He said Monday that the nurse is "clinically stable."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/health/ebola-nurse-how-could-this-happen/index.html

This also an excerpt from the same article:

On Monday morning, an official with direct knowledge of the Texas nurse's case told CNN that CDC disease detectives interviewed the nurse several times and thought there were "inconsistencies" in the type of personal protective gear she wore and with the process used to put the gear on and remove it.

[pitdakota]

Oh don't even get me started on the media. Reminds me of the Joan Rivers situation that a full week after she had arrested all of the major media outlets were running big headline stories that Joan had been on life support since Sunday. Well no, she had been on life support since the day the incident occurred.

Anything to grab the headlines, even if the content doesn't make much sense!

However, they will do some serious work to try and determine what breech in protocol occurred and then review recommendations to see if anything needs to be changed.

In the meantime, we had healthcare workers at Emory and those in Nebraska that took care of the 2 doctors and Nancy with ebola and no transmission.

Hope that is the way it continues, but won't be surprised if it doesn't.

And in the meantime, people are overlooking the fact that the monitoring and protocols worked for this nurse. She caught her elevated temp, and was quickly admitted to the hospital in isolation. That is what prevents the epidemic. So the system worked.

If they were only able to do that in West Africa, this would be a whole different situation.

[Sunarrow685]

Thanks so much for posting this promising info, Marp2

[Marp2]

Glad you found the information useful Blueskies. I will be following this as closely as I can and will continue to seek further details on the research. I don't expect to hear much new for a while as these things move slowly but I will post updates.

[Lila Belle]

On 10/13/2014 pitdakota said:

Oh don't even get me started on the media. Reminds me of the Joan Rivers situation that a full week after she had arrested all of the major media outlets were running big headline stories that Joan had been on life support since Sunday. Well no, she had been on life support since the day the incident occurred.

Anything to grab the headlines, even if the content doesn't make much sense!

However, they will do some serious work to try and determine what breech in protocol occurred and then review recommendations to see if anything needs to be changed.

In the meantime, we had healthcare workers at Emory and those in Nebraska that took care of the 2 doctors and Nancy with ebola and no transmission.

Hope that is the way it continues, but won't be surprised if it doesn't.

And in the meantime, people are overlooking the fact that the monitoring and protocols worked for this nurse. She caught her elevated temp, and was quickly admitted to the hospital in isolation. That is what prevents the epidemic. So the system worked.

If they were only able to do that in West Africa, this would be a whole different situation.

Standing O !

[Marp2]

Hi Pit,

Just wanted to let you know that I have received the "Letter" and am s l o w l y, make that very slowly making my way through it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[pitdakota]

I hear ya about the slowly making the way through it.

I was so shocked to see it in my email today. Based on our conversation yesterday when she told me that they didn't have the print copy of the journal in yet, I thought it would at least take several days. But she assured me that she would flag it and make sure I received a copy. And boy, was she good to her word!!!