We had two different doctor’s appointments today at two different locations, although both were at Straub Hospital offices. Each of them had signs posted at the sign-in desks asking patients to inform the nurse or receptionist whether they had traveled outside the US in the past 30 days.
Better safe than sorry, I suppose, but I suspect the number of people traveling from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea to Hawai’i is vanishingly small.
“outside the U.S.” covers a huge area!
Yep. I don’t know if this is paranoia or foolishness.
Well, asking people about their travel if they’re at the hospital sick, doesn’t seem abnormal just because… well, there are a number of reasons that might be important.
Someone’s unlikely to have malaria if they’ve just come from Philadelphia.
But if they’ve recently been in Haiti, malaria or even cholera might be possibilities, right?
Ebola being highly unlikely in either case.
You would think if it’s about Ebola, they’d ask about travel from Africa, if not specifically those particular countries in Africa.
And what about stuff that might be an issue INSIDE the U.S. where they might’ve traveled from recently?
Like say they just came from an area where they were exposed to flood water (e.coli), got a tick recently while hiking in the Poconos (Lyme)… ? That could be relevant.
There’s no substitute for health care workers being mindful & getting the proper and customized history from a patient when they show up.
But of course that is often impossible, and even actively discouraged, because they’re trying to push patients through an assembly line.
Thus, you get these haphazard & bizarre questionnaires they come up with.