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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAt the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence
THERE is an unspoken rule in medicine: we do not tell tales out of school. As an emergency room physician, an Army veteran who was deployed to a combat support hospital in Baghdad in 2005, and a biomedical researcher in the field of cardiac-arrest resuscitation, I have been and am, on a daily basis, a witness to grave misfortune. Ordinarily, though, except for medical purposes, I will not discuss what I have seen.
Last week a colleague asked me to make an exception. The father of two young children, he was moved by the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., to ask his professional circle to reconsider our silence. I am an expectant father, and his words resonated with me. They reminded me that we doctors are at the front lines of the scourge of gun violence, and that to remain silent as this threat to public health continues unabated would be no different than for an oncologist or a cardiologist to stay mum on the dangers of smoking.
The doctors balance between discretion and education is complex. But the news from Newtown, and my colleagues request, convinced me that we have reached the threshold. I can no longer stay silent.
There was a 9-year-old girl, shot in the chest by an assault rifle during a drive-by gang shooting, in a botched retaliation for a shooting earlier that day. She was baffled, and in pain, with a gaping hole under her collarbone. I have also seen an 8-year-old who found a shotgun in the closet while playing with a friend. The two boys pointed the weapon at each other a number of times before the gun accidentally discharged. The 8-year-old arrived in my emergency department with most of his face blown off. Miraculously, he survived.
Another child I will never forget was a 13-year-old who was shot twice in the abdomen by an older boy who mistook him for one of a group that had bullied and berated him a week earlier. Slick with sweat and barely conscious, he groaned and turned to look at me. Soon after, he died in the operating room. His mother arrived minutes later, wide-eyed and breathless.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/at-the-er-bearing-witness-to-gun-violence.html?_r=0
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Part f it is tradition. I wish all doctors start speaking of this, without names of course, hippa.
But we also need our media to start showing the bloody sheets. It is time Americans see the damage. I suspect most can't even imagine.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Time people wake up to what is going on with guns in our society.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)ER doctors know the real story.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)She tells similar stories. I don't know how she does it.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)there would be less killings. If the media showed just one photo of those dead SH children...we'd see more people in favor gun regulation. It would be a public service.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)are my natural enemy"
^^^^ another quote from the article.
Surely we want to be on the side of the healers, not their natural enemy. I know I do.
Please help spread the word:
"March on Washington for Gun Control" is set for January 26, 2013. National Mall is gathering place. http://guncontrolmarch.tumblr.com/ from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence on Twitter @CSGV
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Let's hope for a 'warm snap.' The last time we were in DC in January, it was to scream at smirk's darkened limo as it rushed by at 30 mph.