Firearm safety advocacy: Practice Gap discussion at Update Course 2018

Injury prevention is part of what pediatric surgeons do, and firearm safety advocacy is important for true patient advocacy.

When families report having guns in the home, clinicians can educate them on safe storage: trigger locks, storing ammunition separately, locking the gun away with no accessible key.

The speaker's hospital supplies trigger locks for any family that asks for them, and there are multiple signs around the hospital to that effect.

In Hong Kong, pediatric gunshot injuries are 'very unheard of.'

Gunshot injuries are a public health issue that pediatric surgeons should address through injury prevention, similar to Safe Kids campaigns for seatbelts and bike helmets.

A medical student (Maria Libertine) is working on using iPhone fingerprint sensors on guns so that children cannot activate them, and exploring facial recognition technology for the same purpose.

Firearm injury is a public health issue, not solely a political issue, and pediatric surgeons need to address it as such.

The number of automobile deaths in both adults and children has decreased steadily as a result of making cars safer; the same approach should be applied to firearms.

In the Netherlands, gun injuries in children are much less common than in the United States, principally because of very strict laws to own a gun and screening of gun owners; guns are found mainly in the criminal atmosphere and very little in the home.

In the Netherlands, the risk of pediatric gun injuries is very low unless children get involved in criminal street activity.

The Netherlands is a cycling society and has more pediatric head injuries because many parents do not have their children wear helmets.