My God, I almost can't believe it!

[mnhtnbb]

16. It was not a "corporate suit" who took Mr. Duncan's history and did the physical

in the ER when he first presented to Texas Presbyterian.

Go ahead and make fun of the suits--it's easy pickins' at DU--but the front line ER
nurses/docs are the ones who first screwed up. And it's not surprising. Have you
ever visited a busy ER of an 800+ bed hospital?

It doesn't operate like a movie. Who expected the VERY FIRST case of Ebola to walk
through their ER doors? Nobody. The hospitals at Nebraska and Emery were prepared...
meeting the Ebola patients who were transferred there from Africa. They knew what was
coming.

I'm not into laying blame, though, even though I retired as a "corporate suit", one with many
years of experience in a well known teaching hospital in Los Angeles, although my Master's
is in Hospital Administration--a 2 year graduate program at UCLA. It was, indeed, more
than a "course".

Guidelines for staffing and training are made by people with clinical expertise in EVERY
patient care department. Nurses make decisions about nurse staffing, and they do
the training. I'm not blaming the two nurses who have contracted Ebola because
they took care of Mr. Duncan. A lot of health care folks have died trying to take
care of Ebola patients in Africa. They are heroes. Mistakes happen. Lack of preparation
happens. Expectations are blown away.

I am not saying that I agree with the business model of providing health care in this country.
To speculate that things would have gone differently if Mr. Duncan had arrived at another hospital
in another state...or in another hospital in another country with universal health care, is useless.
It is imperative that we learn from the experience, and go forward.

I hope that both nurses recover.