Can anyone with more time than me chase down these pendings so we can clear them or place them off the radar? I could really use someone's help...
The Lubbock, TX person was cleared.
"This is not an outbreak, this is not a case that's important to know first off," said Dr. Mike Ragain, UMC Chief Medical Officer.
Early Thursday, concerns over Ebola put a Lubbock man into the hospital, under isolation.
UMC marketing director, Eric Finley said the patient was exhibiting some flu-like symptoms, and paramedics transported him from his Northeast Lubbock home to the hospital.
A few hours later, he was given the all-clear and released from the hospital.
While the patient was deemed safe to return home, UMC learned a lot from this from this experience, especially in terms of taking precautionary measure for the future.
"Truth be told, we're fairly used to isolation precautions, but Ebola raises the bar a little bit on the severity of that, so we've had to retrain everyone about really how to do this well and I have to be honest, I was not as well informed as I am now on how to do that," said Dr. Ragain.
Dr. Ragain said, one of the most important ways to protect medical staff from this kind of infectious disease, has a lot to do with the protective gear.
"Our employees just by chance today and tomorrow are being trained to put on and remove the protective equipment and it is appearing more and more that that is a critical element in preventing spread if the disease," said Dr. Ragain.
"We're initiating the buddy system for nurses, so when one nurse puts the equipment on and takes it off, there's another nurse who is watching them do it to make sure they are doing it correctly," said Finley.
Finley said various protocols in place, help the hospital prepare for any potential future cases.
"Small teams of nurses, small teams or respiratory therapists, small teams of environmental services and janitors, we're not including any nurse or any janitor at random, it'll be people who are specifically trained to handle these types of situations," said Finley.
Dr. Ragain said state health authorities determined the Ebola test wasn't needed for this patient, as his symptoms of diarrhea and nausea were confirmed to be from a pre-exisiting condition, not an infection.
"We feel very confident that we know what happened to this individual, we know what caused his symptoms, he was treated, he's doing well, there's no Ebola in this patient," said Dr. Ragain.
Two red flags when evaluating a potential Ebola case, are the presence of fever and travel to a high risk area.
While this patient had been in Africa, he was in the Ivory Coast, which has no reported cases of Ebola at this time.
"Ebola is a very scary illness, it's certainly reasons for the public to be frightened about it, but it's not airborne. It has to be transmitted through bodily fluids and so there is some protection just in that fact, and as long as those protocols are in place we really do believe they'll be safe," said Finley.
The City of Lubbock Health Department personnel will continue to monitor the patient's condition.
http://www.myfoxlubbock.com/news/local/story/UMC-Ebola/DewSxkvya0KJR5q6WEoVGQ.cspx
