Nurses Claim at Texas Hospital: 'There were no protocols' about Ebola

A union made troubling allegations Tuesday about the Texas hospital where a nurse contracted Ebola, claiming "guidelines were constantly changing" and "there were no protocols" about how to deal with the deadly virus."

"The protocols that should have been in place in Dallas were not in place, and that those protocols are not in place anywhere in the United States as far as we can tell," National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro said. "We're deeply alarmed."

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said the claims, if true, are "startling." Some of them, he said, could be "important when it comes to possible other infections."

Officials from National Nurses United declined to specify how many nurses they had spoken with at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. They said they would not identify the nurses or elaborate on how the nurses learned of the details in their allegations in order to protect them from possible retaliation. The nurses at the hospital are not members of a union, officials said.

Here's a look at some of the allegations the nurses made, according to the union:

Thomas Eric Duncan wasn't immediately isolated.

On the day that Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to the hospital with possible Ebola symptoms, he was "left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present," union co-president Deborah Burger said.

Up to seven other patients were present in that area, the nurses said, according to the union.

A nursing supervisor faced resistance from hospital authorities when the supervisor demanded that Duncan be moved to an isolation unit, the nurses said, according to the union.

At first, protective gear nurses were wearing while treating Duncan left their necks exposed.

After expressing concerns that their necks were exposed even as they wore protective gear, the nurses were told to wrap their necks with medical tape, the union says.

"They were told to use medical tape and had to use four to five pieces of medical tape wound around their neck. The nurses have expressed a lot of concern about how difficult it is to remove the tape from their neck," Burger said.

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