I wrote about Ebola earlier this week and have been following the news closely. It's a fascinating story on many levels, including many leadership failures.
I wrote a piece for LinkedIn, written for a general public audience:
A Lack of Planning and Protocol Failures in Healthcare Are Not Limited to Ebola
I also recommend you watch this shocking NBC interview with a nurse, Briana Aguirre, from THR Presbyterian. Actually, nothing she says is really that surprising about the training failures, communication failures, and leadership failures:
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Protocols haven't been shared well. Staff haven't been trained on protocols effectively. Protocols keep changing.
Briana, an emergency department nurse, bravely volunteered to treat her Ebola-stricken colleague, Nina Pham, although none of the nurses had received proper Ebola training (she talks about that in the video). That's makes her a hero.
Briana asked for help, she asked questions… the infection control department didn't have answers for her. WHAT? A VP promised to get her some answers… and didn't call her as he promised. So many failures. Watch the video. Â Briana speaking out makes her a hero a second time. She says she fears for her job, but I suspect she has a great career ahead of her in nursing leadership… somewhere.
We have a large number of systemic failures. But these failures and their root causes happen all the time and lead to a lot of patient harm and many deaths.
It's very sad. It's very fixable.
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A comment from LinkedIn: