In an effort to raise health care workers’ awareness of and safety around Ebola, the Medical University of South Carolina has launched a new online training program.
The simulation seeks to train health care workers about the potential tolls the disease could take on a population and warns them of their potential to unknowingly spread the disease. According to a 2015 World Health Organization report, health care workers can have an infection rate of up to 32 times higher than the general population. People who contract Ebola suffer a fatality rate as high as 78 percent. Infection is very easily contracted from bodily fluids.
“This training program takes information from multiple resources, including the CDC, the National Ebola Training and Education Center and the European Network for Infectious Diseases,” said Lacey MenkinSmith, assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at MUSC and first author of this article. “What makes the program unique is that it combines all that information into one training program that is widely distributable.”
The program consists of a self-study section, evaluations, a simulation workshop, and a performance assessment tool. In addition to tests already conducted, the MUSC team plans to test the program in a variety of community hospitals or intermediary hospitals, as well as on-site in Uganda — neighbor to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an Ebola outbreak is currently ongoing.
“Instituting this training at various universities and hospitals across the world will take time and adjustments” Jerry G. Reves, professor and emeritus dean of the College of Medicine at MUSC and principal investigator of the study, said. “However, this represents the beginning of a concrete way to ensure that health care workers are protected from Ebola with just-in-time training anywhere in the world.”