Is America Ready for the Ebola Threat?
As follow-up tests confirmed Sunday that a Texas nurse who cared for patient Thomas Eric Duncan has become the first known American to contract Ebola in the country, the largest union of registered nurses said there's a "huge vacuum in both credibility and implementation" in hospitals' preparedness to contain Ebola.
National Nurses United said that a survey conducted among 2,000 nurses at more than 750 facilities in 46 states and the District of Columbia shows that 85 percent of them had not been provided education by their hospitals about Ebola in a setting that would allow them to interact with or ask administrators questions, Dallas News reported.
"As has been shown in Dallas, they are not prepared," the Union's co-president Deborah Burger was quoted as saying in a press conference in Oakland, California, on Sunday. "There is a huge vacuum in both credibility and implementation."
