Emergency Department Processes for the Evaluation and Management of Persons Under Investigation for Ebola Virus Disease

A pilot survey of the U.S. medical waste industry to determine training needs for safely handling highly infectious waste

“…[5][6][7][8] This limited capacity not only presented logistical barriers but also raised concerns about waste worker preparedness to handle category A regulated infectious waste. Furthermore, few peer-reviewed articles specifically pertaining to the United States focus on the safe handling of category A waste or tangentially relate to highly infectious waste treatment [9][10][11] ; those that do discuss category A waste, in Europe, do not follow the same classification system as the United States.…”

Determining training and education needs pertaining to highly infectious disease preparedness and response: A gap analysis survey of US emergency medical services practitioners

“…The 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak resulted in best practices on patient care and supplemental clinical activities within health care settings to be widely disseminated. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Highly infectious diseases (HIDs) like EVD tend to have high case fatalities; are easily transmissible from human to human; and require intensive medical, public health, and community control measures. 17 Consequently, the EVD outbreak underscored the lack of consistent guidelines, training, and education for workers outside of traditional hospital settings who might also encounter potential HID scenarios, and subsequently respond to these hazards.…”

The Response Capability of Designated Special Pathogen Assessment and Treatment Centers: Staffing a Major Health Incident

“…All articles selected were case studies, descriptive studies, or expert opinion. 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 Most of the articles were based on perceptions of healthcare professionals who either cared for or trained in some manner to prepare for the care of special pathogens patients; in this case Ebola.…”

“…The abstract search reduced the number to 9 articles. A search was then conducted using the keyword "preparedness" (8,177 articles). A combination of the previous search using the keyword of "Ebola" with the keyword "preparedness" using "and" narrowed the count to 126 articles.…”

“…These costs directly affect whether a center has the funds, personnel, and equipment to care for this population. Wadman, et al (2015) focused on preparation of emergency departments' processes developed through expert review and consensus of healthcare workers. Emergency department processes and management of the patients was reviewed extensively at one center.…”