Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Protect your health care worker - a sign at every hospital entrance

I posted earlier regarding the need for an airport program for patients traveling from West Africa.  It took a few days after the first case in Dallas for the authorities to put something like that in place.

That post also noted the lack of preparedness of the US health care institutions to combat Ebola at this time.  The sense of urgency has just not been there.  Till there is excellent awareness and training in place there is a need to divert any suspected Ebola case away from the regular intake process in hospitals.  Otherwise we will have many more mishaps like the ones in Dallas.

One solution is to have a sign at every hospital entrance that
1.  Tells person traveling from these countries
2.  Who has the classic symptoms
3.  To sanitize hands and
4.  Call a dedicated triage phone line.

Then the appropriate protocols can be invoked.
We need to prevent every preventable exposure that we can.
Every case brings broadening circles fear, monitoring, and disruption that will cause tremendous damage to the economy and the healthcare system at the least and might even save some lives.

Sign for every hospital entrance

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