Nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the first Ebola case was diagnosed in the United States, are considering walking off the job because they are frustrated over staffing and training, CNN reports.
The report comes after a second nurse, Amber Vincent, tested positive for Ebola. Nurse Nina Pham also is being treated in Dallas for Ebola. Both were part of the team treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national, who died earlier this month of Ebola.
Katy Roemer of the National Nurses United union told CNN that officials should listen to the concerns of registered nurses, and that President Barack Obama should order that hospitals follow standardized procedures throughout the country.
Nurses in Texas say they were given inadequate training to treat Duncan.
"Nurses have the right, if we're going to risk our lives caring for these patients, to have . . . optimal equipment, including Hazmat suits, Roemer said Wednesday on CNN's
"Erin Burnett Out Front."
CNN's chief medical editor, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, also reported that Vincent called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before boarding a flight because she had an elevated temperature. Vincent was given no advice not to fly, Gupta said.
Vincent had a temperature of 99.5 degrees, but CDC guidelines said she wasn't showing signs of Ebola unless her temperature was at least 100.4.
Gupta called that "significant" because Vincent had been known to have contact with someone with Ebola in the past few days. If that had happened to someone trying to board a plane in west Africa, she would have been flagged, Gupta said.
In another appearance Wednesday, this time on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File," Roemer said the standardized CDC protocols also should include respiratory protection and another nurse to witness equipment being put on and removed.
Though the CDC issued the guidelines, she said, it does not have the power to enforce them the way a presidential mandate would. She also said nurses across the country are reporting that the protocols are not in place in their hospitals.
"If a protocol's going to be worth anything, it actually has to get into the hands of the people who are going to use it," Roemer said.