Nurses Outraged by Blame Game
“They threw the nurses under the bus. And when they admitted that it was not the nurses’ fault, there was no apology.”
That assessment of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s handling of the Thomas E. Duncan case comes from a nurse who supervises the emergency department at another community hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
The nurse, who spoke with MedPage Today on condition of anonymity, said she and other nurses were very familiar with the electronic health record system used at Texas Health Presbyterian since it is used by several hospitals in the region. They all knew the statement about separate workflows was false.
Equally false, she said, is the the suggestion that Duncan was initially discharged by the ED because he had no insurance.
“That is ludicrous,” she said. “In the first place, neither the doctor, nor the nurse knows if the patient has insurance — and don’t want to know. All we know is that the patient doesn’t have a primary care doctor, so the patient is admitted under the care of a hospitalist.”
Filed under: General Problems
Evidently the physician never read the notes about the patient being from Liberia. Were there notes about this? Is so, then the fault is with the doc and not the nurse. I know that in some hospitals there is a lack of ‘communication’ between departments and this could be the case here….a poor electronic system or just poor communication period. In any event, it is clear that the US is not prepared for Ebola. The precautions in place are too little and will soon be too late. The head of the CDC is a NUT.
They also played the R card too. Disgusting. The Nurses association has been saying this country isnt equipped for a huge contamination outbreak and this administration, CDC, FDA, and HHS has acted just like they have with the pharmacists, blown them off.