EBOLA USA: Boston Hospital Prepares just in case ... Doesn't want a Repeat of Dallas

The three hospital workers have entered the no-mistake zone.

They are wearing plastic face shields, white jumpsuits, blue knee-high booties, two pairs of gloves, and a hood with an air filtration system attached at the waist.

They are here, learning how to safely treat an Ebola patient at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, should such a patient ever show up, because they do not want Boston to be Dallas.

Dr. Edy Kim and nurses Deb Buonopane and Catherine 
Robinson put on extra gloves during training.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

“The game changer,” said Dr. Eric Goralnick, the Brigham’s medical director of emergency preparedness, “was that second nurse being infected.”

That was Amber Vinson, one of two nurses who contracted Ebola from a patient they treated in Dallas. The other nurse, Nina Pham, was declared Ebola-free Friday. Meanwhile, a doctor is lying in a New York hospital with the illness after returning from Guinea, one of three West African nations at the epicenter of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

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At the Brigham this week, medical teams learned how to protect themselves from the virus, if it is ever in their midst.

The hospital plans to train about 120 nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, and others to form an Ebola team that will be deployed if a high-risk case comes to the hospital.

As part of that training, the three workers in white jumpsuits peer through their plastic face shields at pinkish liquid puddling at their feet.

Patients with Ebola lose liter upon liter of body fluid. So nurse Maggie Holmes, infection control practitioner, squirts liquid onto the floor. It looks nasty but is benign, part of the four-hour training course in the hospital’s STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation.

Waste management is a critical part of caring for a patient with Ebola. When patients are at their sickest, the Ebola virus is highly concentrated in their bodily fluids.

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