Question for DUers, especially doctors and nurses.

[MoonRiver]

If you 1., had just cared for a person, who subsequently died of ebola, 2., had a co-worker who cared for the same individual and contracted ebola, and 3., developed a fever of 99.5, would you have boarded a plane to visit family even if given a thumbsup by the CDC?

[littlemissmartypants]

1. No. I wouldn't. nt

[bigwillq]

2. No (nt)

[KittyWampus]

3. Denial is a very primal human strategy. So my answer today might be very different

than the one I'd give in your scenario.

Just being honest.

Edit- Warpy, who is a retired RN on DU, has called this sort of denial when faced with ones own illness "magical thinking". I guess that is one way to put it. But I don't think it's something you can ding people for. It's a basic human tendency.

[etherealtruth]

4. Though I quit nursing 21 years ago (with the birth of my kids)

I think this is a question I can still answer ....

ABSOLUTELY NOT

[likesmountains 52]

5. No..

[YarnAddict]

6. I probably would have trusted

the CDC to give good advice. Whoever she spoke with at the CDC should have tried to reassure her, but advised her to stay home, just as a precaution.

This overreaction is getting out of hand. Schools closing, won't be long before clinics and emergency rooms will be overflowing. The close contact with actual sick people in those ERs will lead to more people actually being sick which will lead to more ER visits . . .

This needs to be contained NOW. (And by "this," I don't mean Ebola; I mean the overreaction, panic, and hysteria.)

[MoonRiver]

8. Well, I just want to say,

I would never have risked my family members' health by flying under the scenario I mentioned. But that's just me!

(I would also have been concerned about other passengers on the plane, but many don't care about strangers. Most of us do tend to have empathy toward our families, however.)

[littlemissmartypants]

7. In 1992

I treated a patient with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease aka CJD.

The CDC rep told me there had been "No cases in the US" while I was trying to determine infection control protocol that would be appropriate for the case. I was told to gown, mask, double glove...

I clearly had a case. I also had enough knowledge to know it's mode of transmission. The CDC got it wrong then. I have no faith in them now.

Never trust one source.

That was 1992.

~ Lmsp 🙅

[MoonRiver]

10. Wow, so absolutely nothing has changed since then!

[merrily]

13. I love caregivers, including this poor soul who has been exposed to ebola

because she did not refuse to care for a patient.

[Sheldon Cooper]

9. I think we're on the same wavelength:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5674316

[MoonRiver]

11. yes we are

[merrily]

12. Trying to exonerate the CDC? Why? She may have been too ill to think clearly.

I've been there.

Granted her fever was not that high, but I don't know the full range of what she was feeling, apart from understandable terror, which also clouds thinking.


I'm surprised she even had the presence of mind to call the CDC.

And nurses are very used to bowing to authority. (I don't mean that in a bad way, but my fever once went way high because my nurse could not get hold of a doctor to prescribe aspirin and she was not allowed to take that on herself. Instead, she sat beside me and applied cold cloths until she got the scrip.)

Does it make you feel better to shift blame to her? Why?

[MoonRiver]

14. Don't know why you think I am exonerating the CDC. I am definitely not doing that.

[merrily]

15. If what the CDC told her should have been irrelevant to her, how is that not

putting the blame on her, rather than the CDC?

In any case, why blame the nurse, at all? Do you know how clearly she was able to think? Do you know what she'd been told about all this or her condition before she made the call to the CDC? What good can come from deciding she should have ignored the CDC?

[MoonRiver]

17. No, I don't know anything about all that.

My question was if DUers would have flown under the same circumstances. Clearly there was a lot of misinformation, but I for one, would not have taken a chance with my family's welfare. BUT THAT'S JUST ME.

[merrily]

18. In reality, you have no clue what you would have done in her shoes because you don't know the

facts of what her shoes were like at that moment. Neither do other DUers.

I've been so sick and so unable to think straight, even enough to dial 911.

[MoonRiver]

23. Yes, I do indeed have a clue.

I have had much higher fevers than 99.5 and rationally chosen not to expose others to my illness. She was not delirious. She apparently had the mental capacity to board a plane, visit with family and return to Dallas.

[TwilightGardener]

16. No--to agree to care for a patient like Duncan is to accept that you might be

infected, and you must also accept that it's going to put a little crimp in your daily life until the three "danger" weeks have passed since last contact. I wouldn't, for example, have had intimate relations with my husband, or even kissed him--same as when I think I'm coming down with a flu or cold. I wouldn't have flown. Wouldn't have had guests over at my house. I would have been extra careful about cleaning/disinfecting at home and keeping body fluids to myself, at home and elsewhere, until the proper amount of time had passed.

[merrily]

19. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who was also exposed, and was put into "voluntary quarantine" went to

a restaurant. If we are going to fault anyone other than the CDC, I'd choose her before a nurse.

[TwilightGardener]

20. It's not a matter of "faulting" nurses, it's just that I watch the news (if these nurses had,

they'd have seen many well-protected health workers and doctors, experts on ebola, contracting the disease and should have thought, hey, that could easily happen to me! no matter what the CDC or their administrators told them)--also I've been through a sort of self-imposed quarantine before on blood/body fluids as a result of a needle stick injury with a Hepatitis C patient. Snyderman is a selfish dingbat who should be fired as a medical correspondent, she's lost all authority and credibility.

[merrily]

21. Saying or implying that the nurse should have ignored the CDC is faulting the nurse.

One nurse or another has been faulted throughout this, for one thing or another, very unfairly in my opinion.

[TwilightGardener]

22. The question was, what would I, as a (former) nurse, have done.

And I'm saying what I would have done and thought about the whole thing. I am not a trusting soul, and I know that most facilities say one thing in terms of nursing standards and protocol and policy, which covers THEIR ass liability-wise when it's in writing--but the practice at the bedside level is a very different story.

[kestrel91316]

24. No. But then, with my microbiology background, if I'd been working with Ebola in scary substandard

PPE with trash piling up to the ceiling, I wouldn't be wanting to travel ANYWHERE for 21 days. It's just common sense to me.