Video from Today.com

Amber Vinson, the Kent State nursing graduate diagnosed with Ebola last month, revealed the guidelines she followed and the hurt she felt being classified as a “reckless nurse” in an interview with Matt Lauer on the TODAY show this morning.

“I’m an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) nurse,” she said in the interview. “I embrace protocol and guidelines and structure, because in my day-to-day nursing, it is a matter of life and death, and I respect that fact. I would never go outside of guidelines or boundaries or something directly from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) telling me I can’t go (or) I can’t fly. I wouldn’t do it.”

Vinson also said the first time she wore the Ebola protective equipment was when she took care of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Oct. 8 from the virus, at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

She told Lauer that the medical center told her she could travel to visit her family — three of which are Kent State employees — and that she never had a direct number to contact the CDC. She said when she flew back to Dallas from Ohio on Oct. 14, she did not feel sick on the flight.

Despite the media criticism and spotlight on her when she was diagnosed with Ebola, Vinson said she would treat another Ebola patient.

“Nursing is what I do,” she told Lauer. “I could never see a patient there and not do everything I can to help them.”

Contact Madeleine Winer at [email protected].