AFT Survey: How prepared are we? Not enough.

In the last few weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials, local health departments, worker and patient advocates, and many others have stressed the need to provide training to nurses and other health professionals on the safe use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other practices for treating Ebola patients. Most nurses have never used such extensive PPE in their practice. America’s healthcare workers will depend on training, drills and up-to-date information about how best to handle a suspected or confirmed case of Ebola to protect themselves and their patients.  Lack of training is one theory as to how the two Dallas nurses contracted the virus after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who died in Dallas.

Responding to public concern over Ebola, governors in several states have asked hospitals to immediately schedule the staff training and drills in PPE, as the CDC recommends. In Connecticut, for example, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wasted no time. He ordered all acute care hospitals to conduct drills in identifying, isolating and treating a patient suspected to have Ebola—within one week of the CDC’s new protocols. 

So what has all this attention to Ebola training meant for hospital and healthcare preparedness?

Not nearly enough—based on the results of a new survey by AFT Nurses and Health Professionals. The survey, of 70 AFT leaders throughout the country, showed that the vast majority (75 percent) were unaware of any new policies or protocols on handling an Ebola patient at their healthcare facilities. More than 90 percent reported that their facility had offered no training for staff on personal protection or isolation procedures for suspected Ebola cases.

John Brady’s experience seems typical.  Brady, president of the Backus Federation of Nurses at Backus Hospital in Norwich, Conn., says that in response to Gov. Malloy’s order, the hospital held a recent drill using PPE.  “However, no frontline nurses or other healthcare workers participated in the drill,” Brady says. “None have received training, including practice donning, doffing or working in enhanced PPE.” 

Supervisors planned and conducted the drill. “They have trained and practiced,” Brady says.  Yet, supervisors don’t practice at patients’ bedsides. “The last time we—the frontline nurses—had any practice with donning and doffing of personal protective equipment was when we had the anthrax scare in 2001 and the SARS scare in 2003. Many of the nurses I work with now were not even nurses back then.  So they have no experience at all with PPE.”

The frustrations of the nurses and other healthcare professionals at Backus Hospital are reflected in the results of the AFT’s survey on preparedness. Many responses to the 23 questions in the survey show how far healthcare facilities have yet to go when it comes to preparing for Ebola:

In the coming weeks, AFT Nurses and Health Professionals will be urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop more explicit and timely guidelines on just how much training is needed, how many drills should be performed, and how often hospital workers need to practice with PPE before they can safely screen and care for possible Ebola patients. At that point, healthcare facilities will have to start providing the right information and training to the workers who need it most.