October 28, 2014 – : Opportunity

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Anchor lead:  What can we learn from recent Ebola transmission domestically? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Everyone has 20/20 hindsight, the saying goes, and while that’s usually true, rigorous examination of recent cases of Ebola virus transmission here in the US is still ongoing to determine exactly what happened.  Karen Davis, director of medical nursing at Johns Hopkins Hospital, says there are many lessons to be learned.

Davis: I think it’s important that we don’t criticize what the healthcare providers did in Texas , that we look at where our systems might have failed, where our systems could be improved, where resources could have been offered in a different way, and that we really do a root cause analysis around this and say, now that we know more information how could we have done better?  What system fixes do we need that we can then take out as a best practice, so other organizations that need to figure out how can we protect our people better that we’re doing that.  We’re hungry for information from those transmission so we can figure out exactly how it happened so it doesn’t happen again.   :32

Davis reminds everyone that panic is never helpful when trying to keep an urgent situation under control.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.