Page 11 - QARANC Vol 14 No 12 2016

Working in
the Ebola
virus disease
treatment Unit,
Kerry Town –
my experience
Hello, my name is Theresa Lewis. I describe myself as having two lives. During the week I work as the Lead Nurse for Infection Prevention and Control for Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust. At the weekend I am Major T Lewis; an Army Reservist with 335 Medical Evacuation Regiment where I work as the unit’s Infection Prevention and Control Nursing Officer (IPCNO).
Earlier this year I had an amazing opportunity to work in an Ebola virus disease treatment unit (EVDTU) in West Africa. This is a personal account of my time there which I would like to share with you.
I have been a Reservist for 13 years and previously deployed to Camp Bastion, Afghanistan in 2009 to work as the IPCNO in the hospital treating battle casualties. However, this deployment was totally different.
The opportunity to deploy came in October 2014 when a trawl was sent out asking for people to volunteer to work in the UK military run EVDTU in Sierra Leone. The EVDTU was set by to provide assurance to local national and international healthcare workers who were working in Ebola treatment centres around the country. Our role was to provide reassurance that, should they become exposed to the virus, they would receive high quality medical care.
Due to the degradation effects of extreme heat and working conditions, working in the EVDTU was limited to a maximum of 60 days. In military terms this is a short tour, but in reality I was still away from my ‘day job’ for 6 months. I volunteered and was accepted to go as part of Tranche 3. My NHS employer, my team and my family were totally supportive. My deployment began in January when I reported to the Reinforcements Training and Mobilisation Centre in Nottingham. During my 2 weeks there I had to complete and pass all of the military tests including fitness, navigation, weapon handling and medical tests. We then had a further 2 weeks of clinical training at the Army Medical Services Training Centre in Yorkshire which culminated with a 2-day exercise, practicing a variety of clinical scenarios, in a simulation complex which mirrored the EVDTU.
On February 19th we arrived in Benguema camp (my home for the next 10 weeks). After a comprehensive 10- day acclimatisation and hand over package we took over the running of the EVDTU on the 1st March. The team I was working with was a mix of Regulars and Reserves from the 3 services (Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force) and personnel from the Canadian Army. Considering all of our different backgrounds we gelled together very quickly and formed good working relationships.
I deployed as one of the two IPCNOs for the EVDTU. A large part of my role was to ensure that the safety of our
personnel was maintained. Primarily this was through the correct wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and for this reason we were often based in the Donning area acting as a second checker of PPE prior to staff entering the facility. During my time there we had to remove a batch of faulty suits as some were consistently found to have holes in them, meaning they were not safe to wear.
We developed an audit plan and undertook IPC audits on commode cleanliness, IV cannulas, mattresses and environmental cleanliness, reporting our results to the Healthcare Governance Group. Cleaning of the hospital was undertaken by locally employed hygienists and part of our role was to train them and supervise their work to ensure the correct processes were followed. We were also an integral part of the training and induction of all new members of staff including the re-enforcement training of Tranche 4 who we handed over the EVDTU to on May 1st.
The night one of our colleagues tested Ebola positive will stay with me for a long time - I was woken at 2300hrs to be told the news and asked to come up with a plan on how to decontaminate the areas of camp where she had been living. Working with the Senior Nursing Officer (SNO), we woke one of the off duty shifts and then worked through the night to decontaminate potentially contaminated areas. In the hospital the tap water is pre-chlorinated with the correct strength for cleaning - at camp in the middle of the night we had to manually make up buckets of chlorinated water at the correct dilution. SNO and I finally got into bed at 11am the next day for a few hours rest before returning to work later that afternoon. Now back at work and sitting at my PC, it’s hard to imagine the contrast in my day job and my deployed role.
As the IPCNO I was also involved in the aeromedical evacuation of patients who needed to be flown home. One of which was an Ebola positive patient from the USA. This involved a 5 vehicle convey from the EVDTU to the airport - a 3 hour journey each way. To transfer the patient from the
THE GAZETTE QARANC 9