Quote:
Originally Posted by icenine
Too say that health workers screw up is a bit unfair. Imagine you are into a 10 hour shift, dead tired, and a patient comes in with Ebola. No matter how good you are you are not your best after 10 hours in a busy ER...plus it is obvious that the management at the hospital in Texas was not up to snuff in protocols and PPE. At the end of the day the virus itself is causing the illness and no matter how good you are people will catch something. Otherwise no one would ever get sick.
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I understand 10 hour shifts on a hospital floor. I was a social worker on a psych unit for a year...it pretty much overwhelmed me. And I wasn't dealing with Ebola, just people with bipolar disorder, self-mutilators, etc.
One of the problems with the precautions being used in Africa is that after about 15 minutes in one of those plastic enclosures with no A/C, you're about to pass out. Workers are stripping their gear off without taking the time to make sure they're doing it safely.
But there are not a lot of reasons why workers are coming down with the virus. As you mentioned...the precaution protocols are inadequate. Or the training on the adequate precaution protocols is inadequate. Or after a 10 or 12 hour shit, an error is made when removing the gear, either due to inadequate training, or exhaustion, or a simple mistake.
If that's too harsh I apologize...but it's still pretty much the story.