Hospitals in Tarrant County are looking over their protective gear and protocols to make sure they are prepared should a case of Ebola show up at the door.
J.R. Labbe at John Peter Smith Hospital Fort Worth said the public hospital is ready.
“The safety of our team members is of utmost importance to JPS Health Network,” Labbe, vice president of communications and community affairs, said in a statement to the Star-Telegram. “We have prepared a comprehensive plan for personal protective equipment (PPE) that includes full body suits. We have ample inventory on hand and are confident the PPE selected, as well as the infection control process and checklists we’ve prepared, will provide the safest environment possible for those team members at highest risk for treating a patient suspected of or diagnosed with Ebola.”
Baylor University Medical Center Dallas has access to a warehouse filled with personal protective equipment, but spokesman Craig Civale said the private hospital system wasn’t answering questions Thursday about specific gear available for medical personnel to use while treating Ebola patients.
At Cook Children’s Medical Center, spokeswoman Missy Staben said the hospital is having two town hall meetings Friday to educate employees about personal protective equipment and will communicate with the public about their preparedness once those are completed.
Questions over the way Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas handled the first Ebola case in Texas have brought new scrutiny to national protocols that had not been used before at a U.S. general hospital. Nurses Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson both contracted the lethal virus after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Oct. 8. Both nurses wore protective gear.
Texas Health Resources did not respond to interview requests Thursday about personal protective equipment.
But W. Stephen Love, president and CEO of the Dallas/Fort Worth Hospital Council, said Presbyterian will review information and develop modifications in procedures and protocols once the current “episode of care” is over.
The information will be shared with other hospitals in the council, he said.
Since the nurses tested positive, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have added specifics to its protocol on a website about double-gloving, restricting the number of caregivers involved and having a site manager oversee the use of protective equipment. These are recommendations, not requirements.
CDC Director Tom Frieden has cited a “breach in protocol” that allowed Pham to be infected while she cared for Duncan in intensive care but has not specified the nature of that breach. He did note that some of the nurses at Presbyterian inadvertently violated the CDC protocols by wearing too much protective gear.
But the current outbreak, the largest in history, is blamed not on protocol violations but on a lack of care. The virus has killed almost 4,500 people, most of them in West Africa.
In a letter to President Barack Obama on Wednesday, National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro called for new mandates that go beyond existing CDC protocols: full-body hazardous materials suits, at least two nurses assigned to each Ebola patient, and continuous training.
