N.J. hospitals are well prepared to fight Ebola, state medical officials say
OCTOBER 4, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY JAMES M. O’NEILL
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
New Jersey’s 71 hospitals have the space and equipment, and their medical staffs are trained, to react to any patient with a suspected case of Ebola, including moving them to an isolation room immediately, state health officials say.
Since early August, the Health Department has held conference calls and issued alerts to share and review protocol for handling patients who may be carrying the virus.
And in the past few weeks, North Jersey hospitals have run drills simulating cases of patients checking into their emergency rooms saying they had recently been in West Africa — where the recent Ebola outbreak is centered — to ensure that they isolate such patients for treatment, officials say.
Local ERs have installed signs at their check-in areas asking patients to let staff know immediately if they have traveled recently to the region and have fever and other Ebola-related symptoms, such as vomiting, diarrhea and severe headache.
Officials say the case of Ebola in Dallas this week — where information that the patient had been in West Africa was apparently not transferred to medical staff — only reinforced the need for hospitals to take down the travel history of anyone showing signs of the illness.
“There’s definitely a heightened sense of awareness about this, and hospitals will certainly learn the lesson from the Dallas case about the importance of communicating critical information,” said Shannon Davila, an infection-control nurse with the New Jersey Hospital Association.
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