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There is perhaps no bigger news story right now than the Ebola outbreak. With ongoing concerns and anxiety in the U.S., health care institutions across the country, including BWH and BWFH, are continuing efforts to ensure the safety of patients and staff.
“The safety of patients and employees continues to be our number one priority,” said BWHC President Betsy Nabel, MD. “I have the utmost confidence in the team leading our preparedness efforts, which have been ongoing since July.”
Eric Goralnick, MD, MS, medical director of Emergency Preparedness, and Deborah Yokoe, MD, MPH, medical director of Infectious Diseases and Infection Control and hospital epidemiologist, are co-leading the response efforts. “We want to reassure the Brigham community that we have a plan in place and are ready to manage the situation should a patient present with symptoms of Ebola,” said Goralnick.
An incident management team, led by Goralnick and Yokoe, has been activated at BWHC. The incident management model enables BWHC to very quickly bring together leadership from many departments, address concerns, continue to revise plans and implement the highest standard of training for appropriate staff. This team is meeting routinely to coordinate the hospital’s response.
“We are focused like a laser beam on preparedness and training efforts,” Goralnick said. “Staff, patient and family safety is our number one priority. We have and will continue to work hard together.”
The incident management team is doing exactly that and building upon the planning and preparedness efforts that have been underway since July. “We’ve learned a lot about this disease over the course of the last several months,” Goralnick said. “We are integrating all of these lessons learned from other hospitals and health care institutions so that our plan reflects the best and most current information available. We are also listening to and communicating with the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].”
The team’s plan is to limit the number of employees who would be in contact with a potential Ebola patient, so a specialized, dedicated team is being trained to care for such a patient. In addition, walkthroughs, trainings and drills are being conducted in every location where a patient may present with symptoms, including the BWH and BWFH Emergency Departments and our ambulatory and urgent care sites. These trainings are interactive opportunities for staff to walk through the response, provide feedback and receive answers to their questions.
The incident management team has carefully selected personal protective equipment (PPE) that the dedicated team of staff involved in an Ebola patient’s care would use. Yokoe said this includes full-body and fluid-resistant suits, gloves and powered air-purifying respirators. The PPE that BWHC offers exceeds the CDC guidelines that were updated late last week.
“We put a great deal of thought into our selection for PPE, and we continue to make adjustments as we learn more from hospitals that have treated confirmed Ebola patients,” Yokoe said. “Training for staff who may need this equipment is ongoing.”
Staff from Emergency Medicine, Infection Control, Infectious Diseases, Clinical Laboratories, Emergency Preparedness, Patient Care Services, Environmental Affairs, Environmental Services and many other departments have been working for months on preparedness efforts under the leadership of executive sponsors Mairead Hickey, PhD, RN, chief operating officer and executive vice president; Jackie Somerville, PhD, RN, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of Patient Care Services; Stan Ashley, MD, chief medical officer; and Julia Sinclair, MBA, MHA, senior vice president of Clinical Services. Coordination with Partners HealthCare, Dana-Farber, the city and state has also been taking place on a regular basis to leverage and strengthen the response.
Characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache, vomiting and diarrhea, Ebola has plagued West Africa and claimed the lives of thousands of people. The virus is transmitted through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids from an infected person while that person is experiencing symptoms.
Since March 2014, there has been a sustained outbreak involving more than 7,000 cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Lagos in Nigeria and more than 4,000 deaths.
To view the BWH Ebola Virus Disease resources, visit BWHPikeNotes.org.