“Any time you’re feeling alone, there’s a sense of hunkering down, which increases stress and fear,” says Ann Connor, an associate professor at Emory University’s School of Nursing, who has studied what she calls “intentional comfort touch.”

Touch can be a way to combat some of the fear and stress that are inherent with visiting the hospital—one study showed that patients who had their hands held during cataract surgery experienced less anxiety and had lower levels of the stress hormone adrenaline. With an average Ebola survival rate of 50 percent, the stress and fear of coming down with the disease is surely unfathomable, but hand-holding—without the barrier of gloves, at least—is not on the table.

For nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers, Connor explains that it’s less about what they’re doing than how they’re doing it. She offers the example of getting blood pressure taken, and the difference between just “slapping on” the cuff, and doing it in a more deliberate way.

“There’s a way you can put that cuff around the person’s arm, and place the stethoscope and your other hand, that conveys more comfort,” she says. “Those are ways you can bring back people’s dignity and sense of connection.”

Connor believes this is possible, even with the intense protective gear healthcare workers have to wear while treating Ebola patients. Crystal Johnson, a nurse at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta who has worked with three Ebola patients in the U.S., including Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both of whom recovered from the disease, describes the gear she has to wear.

“We wear disposable undergarments, scrubs, and socks, and we have a set of shoes that we only use during this time,” she says. “Full Tyvek, with booties, a helmet with a hood, and also an apron. Double gloves. And tape up everything.”

But nurses can still perform procedures in the caring, deliberate way Connor describes while wearing all this, and Johnson says that touching through the gear still makes a big difference.

“No one would come near [the patients],” she says. “Once they get here, we’re with them. We don’t leave their side. Nancy said it best, she said she didn’t feel like she was an alien anymore, because we were able to touch, [even though] it was through the gloves and everything.”

In her review of the literature on intentional comfort touch, Connor finds that it’s beneficial for nurses as well, who feel more valuable and satisfied, and less powerless when they are able to soothe patients through touch.

“We are their companions for a long time, because they sometimes aren’t able to talk with or touch their family members,” Johnson says. “We become really close from the start.”

The problem is that in West Africa, where there’s already a shortage of healthcare workers, where many healthcare workers have died, where there have been nearly 7500 cases, nearly 3500 deaths and counting, health workers may just not have the time or mental bandwidth to take a deliberate moment to intentionally comfort one patient. There’s just too much to do.