Viral Intelligence

The CDC thinks that American hospitals are prepared to handle Ebola. RNs beg to differ. Nurses, the frontline care providers in U.S. hospitals, say they are untrained and unprepared to handle patients arriving in their hospital emergency departments infected with Ebola. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly said that U.S. hospitals are prepared to handle such patients.

However, they grossly mishandled their first case. They got the diagnosis wrong and sent the patient home. “The Texas case is a perfect example,” said Micker Samios, a triage nurse in the emergency department at Medstar Washington Hospital Center, the largest hospital in the nation’s capital. “In addition to not being prepared, there was a flaw in diagnostics as well as communication,” Samios said. Partially because of the mistaken diagnosis the number of “contact traces” for the man diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas has risen to 100, officials say...