Today’s Advisor reports on a lawsuit brought by a nurse against her employer for alleged inadequate training on how to treat Ebola safely.
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A nurse who contracted Ebola from a patient at a Texas hospital last fall has filed a lawsuit in the Dallas County District Court arguing, among other things, that she should have received training on treating a patient with the disease.
In October 2014, Nina Phim was diagnosed with Ebola, an infectious disease, after treating Thomas Eric Duncan in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, which is part of the Texas Health Resources® (THR) health system. Duncan, who had apparently contracted the disease in Western Africa, died at the Texas hospital.
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Phim’s lawsuit notes that she was the first person to contract the disease on United States soil. She lived to tell the story of her ordeal, but the petition she filed on March 2 states that, due to THR’s alleged negligence, she “suffered through severe physical, emotional, and reputational injury and will likely suffer in the future such injuries.”
An ICU nurse, Phim alleges that she did not receive proper training to treat a patient with Ebola. “She had never been trained to handle infectious diseases, never been told anything about Ebola, how to treat Ebola, or how to protect herself as a nurse treating an Ebola patient,” the lawsuit contends. “… [T]he sum total of the information Nina was provided to protect herself before taking on her patient was what her manager ‘Googled’ and printed out from the Internet.”
Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that THR was negligent in “failing to ensure that all healthcare providers were trained on policies and procedures on how to recognize, appreciate, contain, and treat the Ebola virus in the patient population” and in “failing to train nurses on proper protection, including how to don and doff PPE” (personal protective equipment). The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.
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Training was specifically addressed in some of THR’s numerous statements issued about Ebola at the hospital last fall. One stated that “Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas staff members are thoroughly trained in infection control procedures and protocols” and that “[n]urses who interacted with Mr. Duncan wore PPE consistent with the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines” at the time.