Posted on 08/13/2012 2:25:34 AM PDT by Slings and Arrows
Let’s set aside for the moment the question of whether it’s appropriate to talk about gun control in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado (though I can’t think of a more appropriate time to talk about it). And let’s not consider whether it makes sense that it’s legal to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition on-line in the U.S, without any background check (though could it, really?) And let’s not revisit that old argument about people, and not guns, killing people (though millions of “people,’ including evil and deranged people, do seem to live in countries with negligible amounts of gun violence).
What I’m thinking about today is the role doctors and other health professionals do and should play in preventing the 30,000 deaths and many more injuries in which firearms are involved every year in the U.S.
Behind the closed doors of my exam room, I ask patients many very personal questions: about their sexual behavior, alcohol and drug use, domestic violence, and other sensitive issues.
But there are no questions I ask–and I ask them routinely, especially of new patients–that meet with more surprise than these: “Do you own any firearms? Do you keep them locked and inaccessible to children?”
I believe the questions come as a surprise because people don’t usually think of gun ownership as something about which a doctor would or should be concerned.
But according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, homicide, suicide, and accidents are among the top three causes of death for Americans ages 0-54, and these deaths often involve firearms-over 30,000 per year. That’s seven times as many as die of cervical cancer, and nearly as many as die from pancreatic cancer annually.
It’s seems to me difficult to argue that health professionals shouldn’t be as interested in the prevention of gun violence as in the prevention of other causes of death.
Yet, doctors’ role in counseling patients about the potential danger of firearms is controversial, as expressed in this exchange. Some see such counseling as no different than speaking with patients about safe sex, smoking, and exercise. Some see it as an inappropriate intrusion of the doctor’s political views into the patient’s medical visit and an invasion of the patient’s privacy.
This latter view was in the news last fall when a Florida law, subsequently overturned by a federal judge, banned doctors from counseling patients about firearms, and would have imposed fines or even jail time on, for example, pediatricians who inquired about safe storage of guns in homes where children live.
In my own practice, most patients I ask about guns tell me that they don’t own any. This isn’t surprising because Massachusetts has one of the lowest gun ownership rates of any state in the U.S. (and, as it happens, the lowest rate of gun-related deaths).
And it’s possible that some patients don’t wish to discuss their gun ownership with me and choose not to answer my questions about it.
But occasionally I have a conversation such as I had not long ago with a man who lived alone and kept his loaded guns unlocked and accessible. Now and then his young nieces and nephews visited and it hadn’t occurred to him, until I asked, that his firearms might be a hazard to those children.
I’m going to keep asking about firearms, especially in regard to those at highest risk of harm from them: children, patients struggling with depression, patients with difficult family relationships.
As a doctor, why wouldn’t I?
Suzanne Koven is an internal medicine physician who blogs at In Practice at Boston.com, where this article originally appeared. She is the author of Say Hello To A Better Body: Weight Loss and Fitness For Women Over 50.
Agreed it may not be any of their business but they are being used by the state ( Obamacare & control freaks in govt.) so why go out of your way to get on the fascist’s radar?
What we need, they say, is a public health approach to the problem, like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago, even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.
.............Dr. David Satcher tried to make gun violence a public health issue when he became CDC director in 1993. Four years later, laws that allow the carrying of concealed weapons drew attention when two women were shot at an Indianapolis restaurant after a patron's gun fell out of his pocket and accidentally fired. Ironically, the victims were health educators in town for an American Public Health Association convention.
That same year, Hargarten won a federal grant to establish the nation's first Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
"Unlike almost all other consumer products, there is no national product safety oversight of firearms," he wrote in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.
That's just one aspect of a public health approach. Other elements:.......
......Disease patterns, observing how a problem spreads. Gun ownership — a precursor to gun violence — can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore."....
My doctor has never asked me if I/we own a gun and I am pretty sure he is a lib. I think I would laugh at him if he ever does ask.
I was born in NH, and my parents were born in NH. I've lived in NH for the majority of my life. NH typcially has one the lowest crimes rates in the nation and that isn't cribbed from anything but uniform crime statistics. It had one of the lowest crime rates 20 years ago and it still does. I'm not sure how you figure that NH's crime rate is "MUCH WORSE" than it was in 1992 but statistically speaking you are incorrect.
Since you hate it here so much I'm glad you are leaving. Bye. Hope you find what you are looking for.
When I go in to a home to do my job finding a loaded gun is very low on the list of things I have seen that would “scare” me.
Matter of fact, I have never had my life threatened by a loaded gun that a home owner has hidden in their home..
And I never will.
My life is only threatened when that loaded gun is in the hand(s) of a human with bad intentions.
Thank you for enlightening me, Obi-Wan. ;^)
Yes that has been the pattern for decades. They demand more and more government which the politicians and bureaucrats are all too eager to give them, and then when the jobs go away and the taxes go through the roof they can't seem to understand why. It goes with the fundamental liberal/yankee arrogance (and concomitant stupidity) of not ever questioning WHY more government is not necessarily good. As I said before they're like plague carrying rats. They consume the resources of where they move to, they crap all over everything, they infect the local bureaucrats with an inflated sense of what they're worth (nothing) adn then move on.
If you can figure out how to get one, let me know :-)
Telling a nosey busybody that something isn't any of their business does not get you any further up the governments round up and execute list than buying the merchandise in the first place. I understand the motto of the 0bama re-education camps for bitter clingers that may come into use if he's re-elected is "Work will make you free." He got the inspiration from the efficient Germans.
Dr Kevin Pho is the editor. The author is Dr Suzanne Koven. I have no idea what Dr Pho’s views on gun control are.
Down here in TN, I've only had one pediatrician ask such a thing and I said “damn straight and you better call before you come walking up my 400 yard drive at dark doc”
i challenge the hell out of em
at my age docs don't intimidate me anymore..sure they are smart and disciplined to grind thru all that crap but they are still human...ask any doctor's ex wife who put him thru med school or latest young nurse..ahem
our current pediatrician out more rural now south of Nashville below Franklin only has hunting conversations with me...he figures I know better how to raise my kids with guns than he does
I got a feeling Ms Koven is a fembot RDB..the usual..prolly knows jack about guns except she treats gunshot victims from Southie or Roxbury
would never understand the concept of “to reject tyranny”...something even Ice-T gets
I just finished Rimini’s Battle of New Orleans...a great work if anyone is interested..having grown up near there and seen the Chalmette battlefield a few times..btw..new park after Katrina..beautiful
anyhow...small but decisive fact...the militia stores in the area were not alone enough to thwart the Iron Duke's brother in law Packenham...not even
without civilian weapons Jackson woulda been crushed and swept away by a professional and well armed Brit army of 10,000 or so
and that kids..is why we have them ultimately..to resist an imposition of governmental force we reject
hunting and self defense and collecting and competition are all secondary...self defense a close second
something MS KOVEN (hoof) will never get
Anytime a doctor asks this question, simply ask for the exact spelling of his name and from what institution(s) his was degreed, tell him he is behaving unethically, and walk out without paying.
We need to maintain a running list of these people for future reference. We also need to keep a list of reliable physicians upon whom we can rely.
My physician asking about firearm ownership is less appropriate than my butcher asking about my sex life. A physician asking about firearm ownership is obviously putting their personal political agenda ahead of their concern about my health. Let’s say I go in to see a doctor because I suspect i have hypothyroidism, pernicious anemia, chronic Lyme disease, and/or cardiac ischemia. Now the doctor starts asking me about guns? You’ve got to be kidding, right, doc? Uh, no. Believe me, I’m out the door instantly. I’ve certainly walked out for much less. Hey, doctor shopping is the ONLY way to find the one or two really good ones out there.
It was a fad a couple of years ago to ask this question in my neck of Colorado, and my answer always included some variation of the F-word along with deliberate hostility. Docs have quit asking me this now. Maybe there’s now a special flag in my file, but even docs I see for the first tine quit asking, Maybe the F-word got used a lot, and not just by me. Maybe the docs wised up and decided to refocus their attention on medicine and not politics. After all, I don’t ask my Congressman if I need an MRI or not. At least not yet.
He states... “As a doctor, why wouldn’t I?”
My answer... Because unless you’ve had sufficient training, education and experience with firearms that give you the professional knowledge to discuss the matter, which I’m sure you DON’T, you’re crossing professional boundaries into malpractice.
Second, it’s none of your business. Are you asking about power tools like circular saws and such? No? Why not? They are just as much a risk as a firearm.
Third, would you tell your patient how much you make, what you spend it on and who you donate money to? No? Why not? It’s a legitimate concern any potential patient has the right to know about his physician. You will probably say that it’s private information that a patient has no reason to know. Well, that’s how we feel about our firearms. It’s NOT something you need to be concerned about.
I had one doctor ask me about firearms. I got up, walked out, filed a complaint with my insurance company and found a new doctor.
My advise would be, stick to medicine and leave firearms out of your examination. You aren’t qualified to discuss it with me and you will get ripped a new one for doing so.
This doc not only does not ask, but would encourage gun ownership if asked.
Wonder what kind of pay off he gets.
I question that number too...
“Old f@rt. Grew up when you could order guns through the mail, when we had about 5% of the government we have today, and no one complained about not having enough government”
Apparently you and I grew up in the same era.
Believe me if I had a line on available and legal ZPU varieties, at reasonable prices, in places other than Russian satellites, I might be interested, OTOH, I would be much more interested in supporting American Industry, if government wasn’t in the way of “shall not be infringed”.
now where did i put it LOL
“Yes, everything which goes into your medical histories may now be entered into the patient healthcare record, which is intended to be immediately accessible to all healthcare practitioners in the healthcare system.”
SWMBO saw a photo “attached” (on the computer) to her health-care records during a visit. It was her drivers license photo.
They are tying the databases together. Yeah, there’ll be cross ties to DMV, BATF, FBI, HHS, and on, and on...
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t ALREADY cross-referencing your entire life.
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