Background

• Ebola outbreak west Africa 2014 threatened to overwhelm local capacity in affected countries.
• Op GRITROCK was part of the UK government response in Sierra Leone.
• Op GRITROCK included engineers, logistics, PPE trainers etc. along with their medical support units. In addition to, and separate from this medical support, a small Ebola treatment unit was built on a site shared with NGO Save the Children and Public Health England. This was staffed by DMS augmented by the Canadian Armed Forces
• ETU reserved for affected healthcare workers and other international personnel

Aims

• Capture and explore the ethical issues tackled by medical military staff who deployed to the Ebola treatment unit. Improve preparation and training
  • Produce training materials for use on this and future humanitarian deployments
  • Improve understanding of the ethical issues facing medical military personnel deploying on purely humanitarian missions

Method

• 5 key informant interviews to develop topic guide
• 20 interviews between March – August 2015 (shortest 40 mins, longest 208 mins)
• Purposive sampling across three UK ‘groups’ defined by deployed role: doctors; nursing care; other related healthcare (e.g. Labs, mortuary, PPE monitors) • Semi-structured: perceptions before deployment, ethical challenges on deployment deployed, reflections subsequent to return
• Audio recorded, transcribed verbatim • Independently coded (HD &SJ); data managed using Nvivo

Deployed Role	Doctors	Nursing/Healthcare	Other HC Related
20 in total	7	6	7
Deployed all	Oct-Dec 2014	Dec-March 2015	Apr-July
1	7	11	1