Nurses Union Head: US Ebola 'Disaster Waiting to Happen'

Monday on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper,” National Nurses United Vice President Zenei Cortez said the Center for Disease Control is not communicating enough with nurses across the country and it is “a disaster waiting to happen.”

Cortez said, “We want the best protection there is for us and also for our patients. And what is missing here is that the hospitals do not understand that if a patient walks in via the emergency room or in the clinics, we need to care for that patient regardless. And if we do not have the proper protective equipment and also the information or the knowledge or the education or the training, then it’s really a disaster waiting to happen.”

“We are there most of the time with the patients, much more than anyone else in the health care field,” she continued. “We see them at the very beginning even before we diagnose or this patient is diagnosed by the doctor that it’s a possible Ebola. So when they walk in via the emergency room or in the clinic, at the first point of contact, it’s always the nurse who’s there. And so we would be exposed much more, much longer than anyone else. And so we are just asking that we be given the proper protective equipment, we be given the hands-on training and we be given the proper education, so that we will be able to ask questions and get our fears and issues, our concerns addressed. that’s all we’re asking.”

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