Frontline professionals are obligated to serve everyone who comes through their doors. Researchers investigate how they balance risk, moral emotions, and fear during a global health emergency.
April L. Wright, a professor of management at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, studies emergency departments. In 2014, while Wright was collecting data for a project on managerial work at public hospitals, the Ebola outbreak began in West Africa. The large urban hospital where Wright’s study was underway, now designated an Ebola response and treatment site, became one of a few places in the country to receive potential cases.
Wright knew the hospital well, and for the first time, she noticed fear creeping into daily operations and diminishing confidence in the emergency department’s ability to assess the risk of Ebola and ensure that sufficient resources were on hand. In Australia, public emergency departments provide universally accessible, high-quality care, often in risky situations involving infectious diseases and violent patients. But the specter of Ebola sparked a crisis of confidence and purpose that threatened to undermine the emergency department’s response.
To read more on the article titled “The Work of Inclusion in an Emergency Department” click here.
