A nurse who works at the Dallas hospital involved in the first cases of Ebola in the U.S. said on Thursday that she is “just embarrassed” for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital based on its handling of the deadly virus.
{mosads}”I can no longer defend my hospital at all,” Briana Aguirre said in an interview aired on “The Today Show” Thursday morning.
The nurse, who has worked at the hospital for three years, said that, prior to the first case of Ebola involving Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died last week, “we never talked about Ebola, and we probably should have.”
Aguirre said she did not personally care for Duncan, although she did care for nurse Nina Pham.
“They should have known they were not handling this crisis well,” she said of the hospital, noting that Duncan was put in an area with up to seven other patients. She added that it took three hours to contact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“They told us that we didn’t need to wear the full suit with them anymore, they were negative. They told us that we now only had to wear a gown and gloves. I asked them, why would I need to wear anything if they’ve been proved to be negative?”
She also said there were open trash containers with soiled items in and outside the rooms of potential Ebola cases, leaving others vulnerable.
“The CDC, our infectious disease control nurses, they had been up and down that hallway where there was garbage piled to the ceiling without so much as even gloves on, without so much as even having their feet covered, and then just walking into other general areas that are supposed to be clean,” she said.
“I’m just embarrassed for my hospital to even say that because I expected more out of us,” she said.