A Message from ICEP President Dr. Janet Lin

Dear ICEP members,

I think many of you may be aware of recent posts on Twitter in response to NRA’s statement for health professionals to ‘stay in their lane’. I am at APHA and heard Jerome Adams, Surgeon General, declare that ‘this is my lane’ and compelling testimony from two teenage girls who witnessed their best friends and family killed by gun violence state that “this is our lane”.

AFFIRM has shared an open letter about our stance as health professionals. (For UIC folks, Chris Barsotti, an alum, is a founder of the organization)

“We are not anti-gun…we are anti BULLET-HOLE.”

If you feel strongly about this issue, you’ll find the letter forceful and measured. 23,000+ signatures in hours…I share for your consideration if you have not seen it. Please feel free to share widely.

The text of the open letter is reprinted below. You can sign the letter at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvoihymid_4yqJoZvPr9JToMmVWauKqOvqGF9IVzPLVdusRA/viewform

Sincerely, 

Janet Lin, MD, MPH, FACEP, ICEP President
University of Illinois at Chicago Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, College of Medicine
Associate Director, International Emergency Medicine and Global Health Fellowship Program
Affiliate Professor, Division of Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health Director
Health Systems Development, Center for Global Health 

This is Our Lane: An Open Letter to the NRA from American Healthcare Professionals

Dear National Rifle Association,

On Wednesday night (11/7/2018), in response to a position paper released by the American College of Physicians (ACP) Reducing Firearm Injuries and Death in the United States, your organization published the statement “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane.”

On that same day, the CDC published new data indicating that the death toll from gun violence in our nation continues to rise. As we read your demand for us doctors to stay in our lane, we awoke to learn of the 307th mass shooting in 2018 with another 12 innocent lives lost to an entirely preventable cause of death–gun violence.

Every medical professional practicing in the United States has seen enough gun violence firsthand to deeply understand the toll that this public health epidemic is taking on our children, families, and entire communities.

It is long past time for us to acknowledge the epidemic is real, devastating, and has root causes that can be addressed to assuage the damage. We must ALL come together to find meaningful solutions to this very American problem.

We, the undersigned – physicians, nurses, therapists, medical professionals, and other concerned community members – want to tell you that we are absolutely “in our lane” when we propose solutions to prevent death and disability from gun violence.

As the professionals who manage this epidemic, we bear witness to every trauma resuscitation, regardless of outcome:

* We cut open chests and hold hearts in our hands in the hopes of bringing them back to life.

* We do our best to repair the damage from bullets on pulverized organs and splintered bones.

* We care for the survivors of firearm injury for decades after they’ve been paralyzed, lost a limb, or been disabled.

* We deliver mental health care to the siblings and parents of the children who have been shot as well as to the survivors of gun violence.

* We treat the anxiety of teachers and students who are already traumatized by the news of mass shootings who are then are asked to participate in active shooter drills in their own schools.

* We prepare for mass casualty shootings with drills ourselves and practice sorting victims by how life-threatening their injuries are while fervently hoping that a mass shooting never touches our own communities.

* We are asked by families, schools, employers and law enforcement to conduct mental health evaluations and threat assessments of individuals who demonstrate dangerous behaviors with legally-owned firearms – yet we have no protocols to decrease firearm risk when present to us.

* We support our own medical colleagues as they themselves must recover from the psychological trauma of being first responders to mass shootings.

* We design trauma protocols to reduce the loss of life from even the most horrific gunshot wounds.

* We train civilians to carry and use tourniquets to #StopTheBleed, something that should be necessary on battlefields but not in American grade school classrooms.

* We try our best to conduct research to stop the epidemic of gun violence

* We hold the hands of gunshot victims taking their final breaths.

* We cry ourselves, as we tell parents that their child has been shot and that we did our best.

* We escort parents into our treatment rooms to take one last look at their dead child before they have been able to process the news.

* We see firsthand how a single moment ends a life and forevers changes the lives of survivors, families, and entire communities.

Our research efforts have been curtailed by your lobbying efforts to Congress. We ask that you join forces with us to find solutions. Help us in our non-partisan, physician-driven research efforts at AFFIRM Research.

We invite you to be part of the solution.

You dismissed the ACP’s position statement on preventing death and injury from gun violence by stating, “Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves.”

We extend our invitation for you to collaborate with us to find workable, effective strategies to diminish the death toll from suicide, homicide, domestic violence, and unintentional shootings for the thousands of Americans who will one day find themselves on the wrong side of a barrel of a gun.

We are not anti-gun. We are anti-bullet hole. Let’s work together.

Join us, or move over! This is our lane.