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In a world where we can travel the world by jet, diseases that were once considered a sore in distant areas can now strike near us.
The United States had to learn that the hard way. In 2014, a patient with the Ebola virus returned to his home in Dallas, Texas, from Liberia. Within 15 days of arrival, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed two secondary cases among nurses treating the infected patient.
The Ebola virus contracts very easily from bodily fluids – about ten virus particles will be enough to do so – and people who have it have up to 78% chance of dying. Health workers are among the most vulnerable.
According to a 2015 report from the World Health Organization, health workers may have an infection rate up to 32 times higher than that of the general population in some parts of the world . Infected health workers may unknowingly spread the disease and, once sick, are unable to care for their patients.
Ebola requires not only a human toll, but also economic. The treatment of an Ebola patient in the United States can range from $ 30,000 to $ 50,000 a day, limiting the number of hospitals that can treat it and making it a very expensive problem.
The best hope of controlling this mortal enemy is to prevent it. Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have created an online software package through the SmartState spin-off company, SimTunes, LLC, to train health care workers in simulation to safely respond to the disease. Ebola virus disease. They report promising results in a small cohort of MUSC health workers in an article published in the December 2018 issue of Health Security.
"This training program uses information from many resources, including the CDC, the National Ebola Training and Education Center and the European Network for Infectious Diseases," says Lacey MenkinSmith, MD, badistant professor. from emergency medicine to MUSC and first author of this article.
"This program is unique in that it combines all this information into a widely available training program."
"The entire course, including basic documentation and hands-on simulation exercises, is delivered over the Internet, allowing immediate training for people," said Jerry G. Reves, MD, Distinguished Professor and Dean. Emeritus of the College of Medicine of MUSC. principal investigator of the study funded by the CDC.
The software package includes a self-study component, a hands-on simulation workshop, and a set of data-driven performance badessment tools. A post-test badesses trainees' knowledge of Ebola treatment, and software tracks and tracks individual and team performance in Ebola treatment scenarios.
This training program aims to reduce the number of critical errors and risky actions taken while treating a patient with Ebola. Critical errors expose an individual to a risk of infection or contaminate the purified area. Risky actions increase the chances of making a critical mistake.
The researchers tested the utility of their software package at 18 health workers at MUSC, a public treatment center for Ebola. Health care workers were divided into two groups based on their experience in treating high-risk infectious diseases. The software has allowed the knowledge to better prevent up to 19% of knowledge in prevention.
Both groups also worked very well in the simulation scenarios, with only 2.3% of the 341 total steps reported for critical errors in both groups. These scenarios included spill clean-up, proper biosuit threading, and the appropriate response to a needle stick. Putting all of these scenarios into practice helps reduce the risk of infection for health care workers treating the Ebola patient.
These results confirm that this software package is a means of rationalizing and adequately educating health personnel on appropriate techniques for reducing infection when treating a patient with Ebola.
The MUSC team then plans to test its training program in other Ebola-related healthcare facilities. These include community hospitals, where Ebola patients could be seen for the first time, or intermediate hospitals, which would treat them until they can be sent to a treatment center. like MUSC.
MenkinSmith, a specialist in global emergency medicine, also wants to test the program in developing countries and plans to take the course in Uganda.
"I want to see how we can adapt what we have to a place where health care is limited, such as a site like Uganda that I will visit," MenkinSmith said. The Ugandan neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is currently experiencing an Ebola outbreak.
"Instilling this training in various universities and hospitals around the world will require time and adjustments," said Reves. "However, this represents the beginning of a concrete way to ensure that health care workers are protected against Ebola through just-in-time training around the world."
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