Infection preventionists have responded to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in a variety of ways: Some going abroad to serve on the front lines, others heavily involved in the U.S. training workers and preparing their facilities to treat possible cases. A video montage of IP comments on their Ebola experience was shown recently in Nashville as part of the opening session of the annual APIC conference. Some of the comments from the IPs in the presentation include the following:
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“I was in Serra Leone as an infection preventionist. It was very hot. There was no electricity. There was no running water. Patients were housed in what were basically tents. I walked in and there were rows and rows of cholera beds. The patients that I saw that were very ill, that were probably not going to survive Ebola, were lying on the grass covered in body fluids and they were moaning. Nothing can prepare you for that.”
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“I thought they should be sending people who are retired and have no children. People like me.”
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“When I agreed to take this assignment, I was quite frightened and I gave it quite of bit of thought. I have a family, three young children — am I placing myself in danger by going over there? But the real answer for me was no. This is what I do.”
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“It was the right time in my life and I thought it was important to be on the right side of history. This in the world’s largest outbreak of Ebola and I wanted to do something directly to improve conditions in Africa.”
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“There has been a trend in [U.S.] healthcare in general, medicine and nursing, toward more and more sophisticated technology. Something like the Ebola outbreak is humbling for the whole profession because it is really back to basics.”
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“We were just working around the clock, trying to get the night shift trained, dayshift, running drills.”
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“I got calls from people saying this patient was admitted from Bali. [I said] that’s the South Pacific. That is not Africa.”
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“We had three people walk off the street — into the lobby, thank you very much, not even the ER — saying, ‘I have Ebola.’ It was a wild time [in Dallas].”
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“We trained over 770 healthcare workers going to West Africa.”
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“I joined the Ebola response and I was sent to train a certain group of people who only spoke Spanish.”
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“During the week that I was there in training we had two fires in the Ebola Training Unit. And I said, ‘Our facility is going to have a fire plan.’”
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“A lot of the time the moms were already sick and the babies and children under 8 or 9 were left by themselves. And one day I was doing infection prevention rounds in between shifts of clinicians and found that one of the little guys had pushed open his crib and crawled across the courtyard and was sitting up on another ledge in another area. I think he just wanted company. I carried him back and he was crying inconsolably — he knew he was going to be left alone. He was crying and I had to leave him crying. It was heartbreaking.”
