(Credit: Getty/Nils Versemann)
Physicians working in emergency departments may be able to reduce the number of gun-related injuries and deaths by simply asking patients about the safe storage of firearms.
Physicians and other clinicians working in hospital emergency departments should counsel patients and their families about safe gun storage, according to doctors who spoke at the American College of Emergency Physicians 2016 Scientific Assembly, Medscape reported.
Emergency physicians might not "prevent every mass shooting, and we're not going to prevent every suicide or every homicide, but we can make a dent,” said Megan Ranney, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, according to the publication.
Although mass shootings are the events that create headlines, they are responsible for only a small fraction of firearm deaths. The vast majority of firearm deaths are preventable, with suicides comprising 2 of 3, Ranney said. About 1 in 3 firearm deaths are homicides, said Patrick Carter, M.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
There has been controversy over whether doctors should ask patients about gun ownership and gun safety. Gun laws allow doctors to talk to their patients about gun safety and physicians should ask about guns particularly for patients at risk for violence, according to a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which Ranney co-authored. One recent study found many parents are open to pediatricians discussing gun safety.