Ensuring the health of health care workers

John Lowe, Ph.D.	Shawn Gibbs, Ph.D.

It’s an understatement to say that the lives of John Lowe, Ph.D., and Shawn Gibbs, Ph.D., have changed since Sept. 5, when the first Ebola patient arrived in the Biocontainment Unit.

After more than seven years of training, leading exercises, conducting research and writing papers for the Biocontainment Unit, the two professors at the UNMC College of Public Health are applying their training and skills.

Their expertise is in managing risk in order to ensure the safety of health professionals while they care for Ebola patients, whether it’s in an ambulance, patient care area such as the Biocontainment Unit, a lab where lab samples are tested or equipment used.

“Managing the health care environment is a major issue with the Ebola virus because it’s a fluid based transmission,” Dr. Lowe said. “If we can limit that then we can drastically reduce the risk to our health care providers.”

With their regular jobs of teaching, advising students and writing papers, they have a typical 80-hour workweek when an Ebola patient is here.

They’ve also fielded hundreds of emails and phone calls asking for guidance, talked to high-ranking government officials and had scientific papers fast-tracked when before it would have taken months longer.

Their work has been recognized worldwide.

When Angela Hewlett, M.D., a UNMC physician who’s been treating Ebola patients, walked into a New York hospital, it was like a rock star walked in, Dr. Gibbs said.

What have the last four months been like?

“On one hand it’s been activating the things we’ve been honing for seven years,” Dr. Lowe said. “On the other hand it’s been a really intense, high-energy environment. Things move really quickly, and things we are doing have significant impact.

“A lot of the protocols we use are for a spectrum of diseases — for the worst of the worst,” Dr. Lowe said. “We didn’t develop a specific protocol for Ebola. There are instances where we are going above and beyond and the way we look at that is what we do is in line with CDC guidelines.”

And that’s gone a long way to putting the community at ease.

“We saw a high level of support from the Omaha and Nebraska community for what we are doing,” Dr. Lowe said.