Each year, nearly 40,000 people in the United States die because of guns, making firearm-related injuries a leading cause of death for adults and children. During the COVID-19 pandemic, gun violence surged even more, making 2020 one of the nation’s deadliest years.
Health professionals could help reduce the toll, but only about 20 percent receive any education on firearm injuries or prevention.
To help change that, UC San Francisco, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and collaborators across the country have created a national guideline on educational priorities on firearm injury prevention for health professionals. The guideline appears in the journal Academic Medicine.
“We hope that this educational framework will fundamentally change how physicians talk about violence in their practices,” said co-first author Jahan Fahimi, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine at UCSF. “It’s engaging with patients, talking about their experiences, helping them understand the risk of injury, and ultimately preventing injuries and saving lives.”