Bright red signs asking patients if they have traveled to West Africa in the past 21 days were posted around Texas Children’s Hospital more than a month ago when the Ebola outbreak overseas continued to escalate.
A few weeks later, Thomas Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola at a Dallas hospital and later died. Duncan contracted the virus in Libera, one of three West African countries where Ebola has spread rapidly and killed thousands. Two of the nurses who cared for Duncan caught the infection and are being treated at hospitals in Georgia and Maryland.
No one has been diagnosed with Ebola in Houston, but Texas Children’s has been preparing for months in the event we receive such a patient. One of the first steps in that process is screening.
Staff in the Emergency Centers at both Main and West campuses and entry areas in the Pavilion for Woman are actively screening all patients for possible Ebola exposure.
Anyone who has traveled to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa within the past 21 days is considered at risk and is immediately isolated. After isolation procedures are initiated, additional screening occurs and Infection Control is notified. The patient must be cleared by Infection Control to be removed from isolation.
Any patient with suspected Ebola will immediately be isolated in a pre-designated room, Infection Control will be notified, and additional screening will occur. Once deemed appropriate, the patient will be transported to a pre-designated room where they will remain until their treatment is completed.
At the West Campus, the patient will be transported to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and cared for by the nurses and physicians there. At the Main Campus, the patient will be transported to the pediatric care unit and cared for by nurses and physicians from the PICU. Since patients will only be placed and cared for in these units, other units do not need to designate isolated space for Ebola patients or receive extensive training.
All patients transported to Texas Children’s by the Houston Fire Department paramedics are screened prior to arrival in the Emergency Center.
Our clinics in the Critical Care Center and at the West Campus, pediatric and OB/GYN practices, urgent care centers and other community centers are being educated and informed on proper screening protocols and isolation methods should a suspected case of Ebola present at one of their locations. However, the care of that patient would not take place within these facilities.
As for visitors to our hospital, we are not actively screening them for travels to the affected regions in Africa, but they all are screened on a routine basis for signs and symptoms of any infectious disease. This screening occurs before visitors are allowed entry into the inpatient units. The screening includes questions about symptoms such as fever, cough, runny nose, and vomiting.
Remember, Ebola is only contagious when a patient is showing symptoms. Because symptoms associated with the virus are severe, it is highly unlikely that someone with Ebola would be visiting another patient in the hospital.
Because this is a rapidly evolving situation, all screening practices are routinely reviewed and will change if necessary.
For more information about the organization’s Ebola preparations please click on the “Ebola Response” logo on the Connect intranet site and on the parallel external Connect news site at texaschildrensnews.org, which is accessible from any computer or mobile device at any time.
If you have questions about our plan or about Ebola, please email them to connectnews@texaschildrens.org. The communications team will route questions to Dr. Kline and the leaders of our response and readiness team to get answers and provide updated information to our organization.