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Preparation is key to outbreak response

Hospital Safety Insider, February 5, 2015

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Screening incoming patients, protecting your staff, and having a good communication plan in place will be the key to preparing for an outbreak of Ebola in hospital facilities.

That's according to experts who took part in a recent HCPro webinar, "Ebola: How to Prepare Your Facility." Designed to help facilities prepare after two nurses who treated the nation's first case at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas became patients themselves, the 60-minute show addressed the concerns that hospitals will have should the virus enter their own facility.

Speakers for the webinar were Marge McFarlane, PhD, MT(ASCP), CHSP, CHFM, HEM, MEP, CHEP, an infection control expert and author of The OSHA Training Handbook for Healthcare Facilities, Second Edition, and Thomas A. Smith, CHPA, CPP, president of Healthcare Security Consultants, Inc., in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and a former hospital safety officer who dealt with patients admitted to the University of North Carolina hospitals during the 2002 SARS outbreak.

The Ebola scare started in August 2014 when it was announced that Emory University Hospital in Atlanta would be accepting two American doctors who had contracted the virus while in Africa helping to contain the outbreak. Those doctors were cured, but it was October when hospitals got a dose of reality as Thomas Eric Duncan became the first U.S. case treated in Dallas.

This is an excerpt from an article in Briefings on Hospital Safety. Visit here to log in or subscribe.

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