Minn. nurses don't feel ready to meet Ebola threat, union chief says

Minnesota nurses are not being trained or equipped adequately to take on the Ebola virus, the leader of the state's nurses union warned Tuesday.

"The hospitals may feel prepared. However, nurses on the front line do not," Minnesota Nurses Association President Linda Hamilton told MPR News, citing a recent, informal survey of the union's members. "We do not feel we have the information we need to care for patients."

Nurses are meeting this week in Duluth for their annual convention and the diagnosis of a nurse in Dallas with Ebola has many talking about the disease's infectious danger and how to treat it safely, she added.

"We need practice, and when we have it, we will be able to take care of ourselves and our communities," said Hamilton, whose group represents more than 20,000 nurses in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. "It's a wake up call. We don't send soldiers into war without the right equipment."

National Nurses United, the national nurses union, has been making a push this week around the U.S., cautioning that nearly a third of their members say their hospitals don't have the right equipment to care for Ebola patients.

Of some 2,000 nurses surveyed nationwide, 76 percent reported that their hospitals haven't established formal policies to deal with patients who might be infected.

Click on the audio link above to hear Linda Hamilton's conversation with Cathy Wurzer.