Public health approach: Physicians aim to prevent gun violence

[SecularMotion]

Indianapolis trauma surgeon Gerardo Gomez, MD, treats shooting victims nearly every day, including some who have been on the operating table before for gunshot wounds.

In 2009, Dr. Gomez and colleagues at Wishard Health Services agreed that they needed to do more than treat firearm injuries. They decided to help prevent them.

They started Prescription for Hope, a project that educates patients about the consequences of violence and links them to community services, such as drug rehab programs. The goal is to keep them out of violent situations after they leave the hospital.

“We look at shootings and the victims as a public health problem, just as we do infectious diseases,” said Dr. Gomez, founder and medical director of Prescription for Hope at Wishard Health Services, which has a Level 1 trauma center. “There’s no question this intervention project is making a difference.”

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/09/10/hll20910.htm

[Downwinder]

1. A medical examination is required for a pilot's license.

Why not a psychiatric examination for a gun license?

[Reasonable_Argument]

2. Firearms ownership is a right not a privilege

So in all but a few states, who's laws need challenged on constitutional grounds, you can only be stripped of your rights through due process. No license, it would be the same as needing a license to vote. Flying is not a right.

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

It isn't absolutely 100% accurate, but it is so accurate that all of us use it daily. To predict future behavior is why we keep such detailed records on everybody from an early age.

A person with a clean police record has a 99% likelyhood that they won't use the gun for crime. That is a better predictor than any psychiatric test.

Having a heart attack while at the controls of a plane is a whole different matter than having a heart attack with a gun in your pocket.

[Missycim]

5. How about one for voting?

both are constitutional rights.

[Kolesar]

3. Reminds me of the 1970s TV show: "M*A*S*H"

Which expressed great skepticism about what our country was permitting.

[GreenStormCloud]

6. Not all guns are germs. Most guns are part of the immune system. N/T

[Downwinder]

7. The immune system has been known to kill.

[GreenStormCloud]

9. Ask an AIDS victim what not having an immune system is like.

Yes, sometimes the immune system does kill. In the 1918 flu those with the healthiest immune systems died because the system over-reacted. And sometimes legal gun owners screw up, but the balance is in favor of having an immune sytem and in law-abing people being able to own and carry guns.

[4th law of robotics]

8. If anything it's a mental health and social issue

not really medical.

[petronius]

10. Sounds like a valuable and appropriate project - this isn't the sort of 'public health'

approach to guns that people object to. Rather, it sounds like education, counseling, intervention, and connecting people to resources. I'm totally fine with physicians providing gun-related safety information (although I'd hardly consider them experts on the topic merely by virtue of their jobs); what is objectionable would be restricting/denying health care access based on gun ownership issues (or any other potentially hazardous item).

Here's a link the the program in question: http://www.wishard.edu/our-services/iu-wishard-level-one-trauma-center/violence-prevention

[rl6214]

11. So there were a lot of points to be taken from that story.

Which one were you trying to make?