Materia Medica Submission: Six Lessons from a Previous Pandemic
- PDF / 131,238 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 185 Views
J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-020-06300-4 © Society of General Internal Medicine 2020
there were dire shortages of Ebola workers during W hen the 2014 pandemic, I applied to volunteer and was accepted after two applications and interviews. Once deployed, the training included supportive care basics, PPE protocols, cultural humility, and self-care. The context of care was foreign, however, and felt like a betrayal of our core principles: if there were unsafe conditions then the patients would not receive care from us until we could be safe providing it. This was deeply unsettling at best, and horrifying at worst. How could we not attend to them when sick? Our trainer patiently and compassionately explained that we needed to take care of ourselves so we could care for others—offering the first of several leadership lessons that changed my thinking and my practice, and fundamentally changed me. Providing care during Ebola is difficult to describe to most people because they can’t have a context for the work. In full PPE and in triple digit temperatures with dense humidity, we hand carried basic supplies including reconstituted oral rehydration salts, linens, medications, and bags of IV fluids, then hung those same fluids and antibiotics, changed linens, and encouraged patients to eat or drink. Labs could only be performed early or late in the day due to equipment malfunction from heat, there were power outages daily, the air was pungent from open burning of medical waste, and the tap water wasn’t potable. Patients often died alone, on their mattresses directly on the floor, because loved ones could not visit them. Touchingly, infectious patients who were strong enough provided care to the sickest—reminding me that patients are always the most important members of our teams and the reason why we are here. The first time I was splattered with infectious fluids, I was so focused on the environment around me that I didn’t recognize what had happened. After providing the patient a clean
Received April 24, 2020 Accepted October 6, 2020
sheet and my colleague sterilizing my gloves, apron, suit, and boots, we couldn’t disinfect my face shield because of the risk of getting bleach in my eyes. When completing our work and getting to the doffing station, I was burning to get my face shield off. Once it was off, however, I realized that despite spending the last hour longing for cool air on my sweatsaturated scrubs and hair, that I was terrified of removing my plastic suit, gloves, and N95. After what felt like ten minutes but was likely 30 seconds, I collected myself and carefully doffed my remaining PPE with my designated doffing buddy coaching me—reminding me that we do our best work when we do it together. Soon afterward, community-based infection control measures were more effective and the number of new cases fell. I was asked to go to a local hospital devastated by Ebola, where two months earlier patients had been locked inside a fence without any clinicians and had food and water thrown over the gate to them. Th
Data Loading...
