Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are of the author alone. It does not reflect the views and opinions of Becker's Healthcare or Becker's Hospital Review.
When celebrating the greatness of America, writers often cite the nation's many stellar colleges and universities.
This is a fine barometer, but I think there is an even stronger measure of the country's resources: Its exemplary hospitals – there is at least one or several in every major city – where compassionate care and pioneering research advance our collective health.
The administrators of these institutions, backed by gifted doctors, nurses and surgeons, ensure that patients receive many things, all of them good and necessary.
But these professionals, starting with the men and women who run the trauma wards and emergency rooms of our most acclaimed hospitals, where they confront almost every sort of problem or possible plague; the mere suggestion that these individuals do not have the training or material to confront a potential public health crisis, that they will be overrun by patients infected with Ebola, leaving nurses exposed to this virus to suffer an agonizing death – the whole idea is absolute nonsense.
I write these words from experience, where, in my role as a biochemist and as someone who works with hospitals in a separate capacity, I do not simply believe – I know – that all the fear-mongering about Ebola is just that: An attempt to leverage the sensationalism and excess worry about a condition that is, one, hard to contract (in comparison to other viruses); and two, an attack against our very well-equipped hospitals.
The politicization of this matter by a handful of special interest groups like National Nurses United (NNU) is, as a matter of scientific fact, wrong; and, as an action unto itself, a gross distortion of the country's hospitals and their earned reputation for excellence.
Our hospitals exist to treat the sick, and to respond to unexpected events. Indeed, an emergency room proves this point because, by definition and practice, it deals with emergencies of an initially unknown context.
The array of patients, from accident survivors and wounded (by gunfire) teens to tubucular children and flu-stricken seniors, represent a global snapshot of the people and conditions physicians and nurses see every day.
With regard to the latter two illnesses mentioned above, both are far more contagious – both claim more lives, individually and jointly, at home and abroad – than Ebola.
And yet, our hospitals not only successfully treat these conditions, they have the clothing, equipment and isolation wards to minimize or eliminate these very deadly viruses.
So, the accusation that nurses are unsafe – that our hospitals are unsafe from Ebola – belies the standards in place (or those about to be in place), which meet the exact requirements of the very commission that accredits hospitals nationwide.
Again, it is an insult (to hospital nurses) to perpetuate this myth of unpreparedness; as if doctors and nurses, armed only with jars of leeches and castor oil, patrol some nineteenth-century influenza ward, marking patients' bedsides with crude chalk lettering to distinguish between the dying and the barely living.
Meanwhile, the real story is a political one: Ebola is a scary illness – a foreign illness from Africa – that makes for good political theater, which NNU seeks to exploit as a way to expand its membership and extract concessions (in California) by waging a two-day strike against Kaiser Permanente.
If NNU wants a single-payer health care system, and continues to fight against the use of electronic medical records, in addition to their opposition to flu vaccines for nurses, my response is this: Go right ahead.
Let NNU pursue its agenda, but please, on behalf of the thousands of doctors and nurses – at thousands of hospitals throughout the United States – do not impugn the skills of these individuals or indict the institutions that support them.
Do not, in short, let a rare virus mutate into a political agent that attempts to kill America's hospitals.
Let us prevent this would-be catastrophe – now!
Michael Shaw is an MIT-trained biochemist and former protégée of the late Willard Libby, the 1960 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Based in the Greater Washington (DC) Area, Michael is a frequent writer and speaker about a variety of public health issues.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.