Ebola Changes You: Reflections of a Nurse Upon Return from Liberia

By Deborah Wilson, RN. The author is currently an IV infusion therapist with the Berkshire Visiting Nurses Association in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and is completing her BSN at UMass Amherst. In October, she returned from Liberia, where she worked with Doctors Without Borders at a 120-bed Ebola treatment center. Names of patients mentioned in the article have been changed to protect patient privacy.

At the cemetery, newly dug graves At the cemetery, newly dug graves

I have recently returned from Liberia, where I worked as a nurse for six weeks along with a dedicated team of physicians, nurses, and other professionals, treating 60 to 80 Ebola patients a day. My 21-day transition time is recently over and, although I am back at work and school, my heart is with the West African nurses who I worked with for those weeks in September and October.

I worked in a town called Foya, managing a 120-bed Ebola treatment center (ETC). During the first two weeks, I wondered if I would last. In the grueling heat, dressed up in all that personal protective equipment (PPE), constantly sprayed with chlorine, each day I was haunted by the question of whether I’d somehow gotten infected.

It all took its toll. Twice a shift the nursing team would put on PPE […]