Posted on 04/23/2011 8:26:13 AM PDT by marktwain
The first funeral Dr. Louis St. Petery attended as a young doctor was for a 2-year-old.
His tiny patient's 5-year-old sibling had discovered a loaded handgun in dad's bedside table, aimed it at the toddler and pulled the trigger.
"That made quite an impression," said St. Petery, a pediatric cardiologist.
It's standard practice now for pediatricians to ask safety questions of parents: Is there a pool in the home? Do you have car seats and use seat belts? Do you have a gun in the house, and if so, is it locked up, with ammunition stored and locked separately?
The Florida Legislature is poised to pass a bill that would restrict doctors' ability to ask such questions.
The bills have passed all committees and the House is expected to vote Tuesday, and the Senate may soon follow.
Referred to by the National Rifle Association as the "Patient's Gun Privacy Rights" legislation, the bills say a health professional cannot ask about gun ownership unless they have a good medical reason, and they may not enter facts about gun ownership into the medical record, "if the practitioner knows that such information is not relevant to the patient's medical care or safety, or the safety of others."
St. Petery said the legislature is favoring the Second Amendment right to bear arms over the First Amendment freedom of speech.
"I think we as physicians are within our rights to discuss any issue we deem appropriate," he said.
In an alert to its members, the NRA said the bill addresses patients' concern that computerized medical records will be used by the government, or by insurance companies intent on denying health care coverage to the owners of firearms.
To doctors like St. Petery, who say they're asking about guns simply to prevent accidental injury, the NRA's thinking is paranoid. In response, the NRA tells its members that they have every right to be paranoid about doctors and medical staff, who cause six times more accidental deaths through medical errors than firearms do, according to CDC figures.
"Physicians have plenty of room to work in their own back yards to stop accidental deaths in keeping with their 'first do no harm' medical oaths," the NRA said.
The bill was a response, in part, to a news story that appeared last summer in the Ocala Star-Banner newspaper. A doctor asked Amber Ullman to find another physician after she was offended and angered by the "do you have a gun in your home" question.
"Whether I have a gun has nothing to do with the health of my child," the 26-year-old mom of three told the newspaper. "It's a very invasive and personal question."
St. Petery says there's nothing personal about the question. He has a gun in his own home.
But the fact is, injuries are the leading cause of death of people ages 1 to 44, and emergency room data shows that shooting deaths are the second highest cause of injuries among those ages 10 to 24, behind car accidents.
Suicide by firearms was the fourth leading cause of injury for those over age 15.
He knows that 40 percent of families have a gun at home. Studies show that keeping those guns locked and ammunition properly stored and locked in a separate location reduces the chance that a gun will be improperly used. So by having the conversation, lives can be saved, he said.
"The best treatment for diseases is prevention, not treating it after it happens. With injuries, it's the same thing, prevention is much more effective," he said. "We as pediatricians have a hard time treating death."
The original versions of the bills, HB 155 and SB 432, would have imposed fines of up to $10,000 and criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for improperly handling information about gun ownership, he said. A compromised worked out between the NRA and the Florida Medical Association simply raises the possibility of medical board discipline, and allows doctors to ask about guns if they feel the question is relevant to the patient's medical care.
St. Petery, who is executive vice president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Tallahassee, says the FMA is at odds with his group. The watered-down version of the bill now accepted by the medical association still holds serious consequences for doctors, and he predicted it will have a chilling effect.
"You are going to have to get an attorney, and there's going to be an increase in what it costs you for malpractice insurance," he said. "Few physicians understand the difference between a penalty that is criminal verses referring you to the Florida Board of Medicine."
if the physician actually wants to help, just give the frickin advice without asking the question.
How much better off might we all be if these Political Activists had studied medicine rather than Women’s Cultural Studies and Alynski Agitation.
They are there to treat symptoms not Agitate. Do no harm. Don’t raise my blood pressure.
Does the good doctor ask patients how many five-gallon buckets they have around the house?
FYI
Exactly. Why not have Eddie Eagle brochures or the like available to parents?
Deaths cause injuries, who knew!
The first time a doctor asks me a question like that, they just as well start preparing a copy of my medical records to forward to my new doctor.
First time I got asked about guns by a pediatrician my son was 2.
When the Doc asked his question there was no other safety issue except guns in his line of questioning.
Confronted with some facts about pools, open 5 gal paint buckets full of water, stairways, cribs, window blinds and other much more prevalent causes of childhood death, this doctor started backpedaling while displaying the ignorance and inability to articulate of the uneducated.
I was flabbergasted at the ‘true believer’ partisan type knee jerk behind the whole gun questioning thing from that doctor. He was not informed enough to have credible reasons behind his generic question. And had no background or defense for why he was even asking them.
When confronted with the fact that he was basically spouting the line of bull directly from the American Academy of Pediatricians, word for word, with no care in the world about the basis. It was more than obvious that he was just marching in synch - all the other peds do this, just part of his training in his specialty.
Pediatricians are sheep. But no mistake, they are the enemy of a free society. THey know much better than we do.
Can't anybody write anymore?
I also very seriously doubt the statistic is even accurate, assuming I understand what the author is trying to say.
In actual fact, of course, guns are WAY down the list of health hazards to children.
In fact, if you have both a gun and a swimming pool, your pool is about 100x more likely to kill a child than your gun.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/levittpoolsvsguns.php
BTW, 24 year old children?
Age under 1 year:
75 deaths by drowning
8 deaths by falls
1 death by accidental discharge of firearms
Age 1-4 years:
493 deaths by drowning
36 deaths by falls
18 deaths by accidental discharge of firearms
Age 5-14 years:
375 deaths by drowning
37 deaths by falls
67 deaths by accidental discharge of firearms
Age 15-24 years:
646 deaths by drowning
237 deaths by falls
202 deaths by accidental discharge of firearms
So ... "do you have access to buckets, sinks, bathtubs, a pool, a stream, or a lake. How about stairs, trees, windows?" I don't see a point in any of these questions - and my physician has never asked my children any inappropriate questions, nor will anyone get a second chance to ask such questions after crossing that line a first time.
Doctors have always been overly impressed with themselves, and the rest of society, until recently, has aided them by putting them up on undeserved pedestals. They actually know very little about how to treat the human body because their paradigm is wrong.
The only time I ever go to a "doctor" is if one of my teeth needs work.
Don't be too hasty. The first time I ran across questions about guns at a doctor's office, the doctor had American Rifleman magazines in his waiting room. His insurer insisted he use the forms with the questions on it. He did not have to require patients to answer the questions about guns.
It is "progressive" brainwashing, pure and simple!
I don’t think its just pediatricians. Last time I went to see my doc, the nurse asked if I had firearms in the house. I told her that was a totally inappropriate question and she didn’t press the issue. I complained to my doc and turns out he’s a hunter. I should have pressed harder but he’s such a sweetie.
The enemy is everywhere. I will NEVER have any children because it is impossible to give them a childhood. Half the people around them are completely dedicated to their enslavement and/or murder. You’d need all the bullets in the country to slaughter all these vermin and that’s only if you have enough willing participants!
There is only one reason to go on living and that is to be cruel to leftist vermin. No other reason.
I make it part of my routine to perform at least one act of cruelty against an adult human every day.
It is a typical leftist/progressive attempt to deceive with language. 98 percent of those deaths are suicides and homicides. They nearly always try to deceive people into thinking that most are accidents, because people reasonably understand that "safety" concerns are not going to stop suicides and homicides.
Anti-gunners love to use the mid 20’s for “childhood” shooting deaths, because it artificially raises the numbers. There are a hell of a lot of 18-24 year olds intentionally gunned down each year, many justifiably. But the BS helps them scream for gun control, “FOR THE CHILDREN!11!!!!!111!1”, of course.
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