Inundated With Flu Patients, U.S. Hospitals Brace for Coronavirus

“It has not impacted our facilities at this time,” said Roy Boukidjian, vice president for infection prevention for CommonSpirit.

Learning from a 2014 experience with Ebola when two nurses in Dallas were infected while caring for a patient, hospitals understand they need to actively prepare their medical staffs for an influx of cases from a contagious disease, instructing them on how to safely put on and take off clothing and other protective equipment, said Julie Fischer, an assistant professor of microbiology at Georgetown University. “Personnel were not trained, systems were not tested,” she said. “That’s where the breakdown happened.”

Health care workers are always at high risk, and the death of a doctor treating patients in China reinforced the dangers.

Some nurses say they are better prepared now to protect workers. “We all went through the Ebola virus a couple of years ago,” said Barbara Rosen, an official with Health Professionals and Allied Employees, a New Jersey union. “For this round, everything seems very prepared.”

But Bonnie Castillo, the executive director of National Nurses United, which represents roughly 155,000 nurses, said some hospitals may not be fully prepared.

“Our concern is that there is inadequate planning and training and also just basic staffing,” as well as the availability of supplies that protect nurses and patients from infection, she said.

Because the nature of the virus is still unknown, public health officials said it’s unclear what future challenges hospitals will face if the coronavirus spreads into an epidemic in the United States. While the current government guidelines call for patients to be treated in specialized isolation rooms, experts say it is unlikely that there will be enough isolation rooms at individual facilities.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/health/hospitals-coronavirus.html?emc=rss&partner=rss