New England Journal of Medicine: License to Serve — U.S. Trainees and the Ebola Epidemic
Lisa Rosenbaum, NEJM national correspondent

“…While much attention has been paid to readying [U.S. academic medical centers (AMCs)] to care for Ebola patients in the United States, there has been little discussion about the role they should play in international relief efforts. Absent a uniform policy for responding to deployment requests, AMCs are taking varying approaches … In this setting, we need to strike a balance between being appropriately cautious and being scared. As Patricia Henwood, an emergency physician from the University of Pennsylvania who just returned from Liberia and will soon go back, told me, ‘I respect the virus, but I don’t fear it.’ Such a distinction is as relevant to our approach to those seeking to control the virus as it is to the virus itself…” (12/17).