Doctors and Nurses Treat Gunshot Wounds All the Time. Now They ’re Preparing for Active Shootings at Their Own Hospitals

A shooting at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, quickly followed by a false alarm at Maryland’s Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, sent shockwaves through the medical community this month — and exposed the reality that hospitals, the institutions tasked with caring for the victims of violent incidents, are also at risk of enduring them. The FBI defines an active shooter incident as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” Of the 50 such events that took place in 2016 and 2017, according to FBI data, only four occurred in healthcare settings, compared to 17 in “areas of commerce” and seven in schools. But the attack at Mercy Hospital, which left a doctor, a pharmacy resident, a police officer and the gunman dead, served as a stark reminder that medical centers must also prepare for the grim possibility of mass violence. Hospital shootings, while still rare, have become more common over the last two decades, rising from just a handful in 2000 to more than 20 in 2015, according to research from Brown University; a 2012 Annals of Internal Medicine study identified 154 between 2000 and 2011. (Many hospitals shootings are the result of mental instability and suicides or escape attempts, according to the Brown data, which may not fit the FBI’s definition of an active shooter incident.) To keep up, hospitals and researchers are intensifying their efforts to prepare for a...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthytime hospitals onetime Source Type: news