Reflections on interprofessional team-based clinical carein the ebola epidemic: The Nebraska Medicineexperience

TY - JOUR

T1 - Reflections on interprofessional team-based clinical carein the ebola epidemic

T2 - The Nebraska Medicineexperience

AU - Schwedhelm, Shelly

AU - Beam, Elizabeth L.

AU - Morris, Rosanna D.

AU - Sebastian, Juliann G.

N1 - Funding Information: The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge Philip W. Smith, M.D., Medical Director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit; Angela Hewlett, M.D., Associate Medical Director, NBU; Shawn G. Gibbs, Ph.D., C.I.H., Professor and Associate Dean for Student Affairs, UNMC College of Public Health; John J. Lowe, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, UNMC College of Public Health; Kate Boulter, R.N., B.S., Lead Nurse, NBU; Christopher J. Kratochvil, M.D., Professor and UNMC Associate Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research. Gratitude also goes to the many clinicians, technicians, and other employees who make the Nebraska Medicine Biocontainment Unit such a highly effective unit. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Nebraska Programs of Excellence grant, Healthcare Emergency Responder Organization Education through Simulation (HEROES) (Connie Miller, Ph.D., R.N., Project Director, University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing), which provided training support for some of the training in which the team engaged. Funding Information: One key aspect of teamwork in this situation has been persistence with ongoing training. Team training has been found to be critical to successful team functioning ( Salas & Rosen, 2013 ), but long-term persistence is a unique phenomenon demonstrated by the Nebraska Medicine team. For 9 years, the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU) sat without a patient admission. However, the NBU team during those 9 years of preparation was never idle. They prepared for many types of bioterrorism agents, drug-resistant organisms, and naturally occurring diseases. The team met quarterly to learn from each other, to practice donning and doffing personal protective equipment, to edit and adjust various procedures for use in the unit, and to drill using various scenarios focused on the care of the highly infectious disease patient. Some of the training support over the years came through a grant funded by the University of Nebraska Programs of Excellence to the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing for emergency preparedness training using online media and hands-on training. This program is called Healthcare Emergency Responder Organization Education through Simulation ( www.unmcheroes.org ). In addition, the team focused attention annually on training surrounding health care communities and agencies on how to use different types of disaster equipment and personal protective equipment, created a learning module to support the H1N1 pandemic for local health care workers, and were involved in numerous research studies (e.g., Beam, Gibbs, Boulter, Beckerdite, & Smith, 2011; Hewlett, Whitney, Gibbs, Smith, & Viljoen, 2013; Lowe, Gibbs, Iwen, Smith, & Hewlett, 2013 ).

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84923039184&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84923039184&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.outlook.2014.11.019

DO - 10.1016/j.outlook.2014.11.019

M3 - Comment/debate

C2 - 25645479

AN - SCOPUS:84923039184

SN - 0029-6554

VL - 63

SP - 27

EP - 29

JO - Nursing outlook

JF - Nursing outlook

IS - 1

ER -