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Abstract
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Nowadays, many physicians and other health care providers are engaging in the very risky, well intentioned, albeit naive and politically inspired, business of asking their patients about ownership, maintenance and storage of firearms in the home, and even removal of those firearms from the home. Some could argue that this is a "boundary violation," and it probably is, but there is another very valid reason why these professionals should not engage in this practice --- massive liability.
Physicians are licensed and certified in the practice of medicine, the treatment of illnesses and injuries, and in preventative activities. They may advise or answer questions about those issues. However, when physicians give advice about firearms safety in the home, without certification in that field, and without physically inspecting that particular home and those particular firearms, they are functioning outside the practice of medicine. Furthermore, if they fail to review the gamut of safety issues in the home, such as those relating to electricity, drains, disposals, compactors, garage doors, driveway safety, pool safety, pool fence codes and special locks for pool gates, auto safety, gas, broken glass, stored cleaning chemicals, buckets, toilets, sharp objects, garden tools, home tools, power tools, lawnmowers, lawn chemicals, scissors, needles, forks, knives, and on and on, well, you get the drift. A litigator could easily accuse that physician of being negligent for not covering whichever one of those things that ultimately led to the death or injury of a child or any one in the family or even a visitor to the patient's home.
To engage in Home Safety Counseling without certification, license or formal training in home safety and risk management and to concentrate on one small politically correct area, i.e., firearms to the neglect of all of the other safety issues in the modern home, is to invite a lawsuit because the safety counselor, the physician, knew, could have known or should have known that there were other dangers to the occupants of that house more immediate than firearms. Things like swimming pools, buckets of water, and chemicals in homes are involved in the death or injury of many more children than accidental firearms discharge [Source: CDC.] Firearms are a statistically small, nearly negligible fraction of the items involved in home injuries. Physicians should know that. So, why all of a sudden do some physicians consider themselves to be firearms and home safety experts? Where is their concern for all the other home safety issues that they don't cover with their patients?
Once physicians start down this path of home safety counseling, they are completely on their own. A review of their medical malpractice insurance will reveal that if they engage in an activity for which they are not certified, the carrier will not cover them if (or when) they are sued.
Keywords: Drowning; Drowning prevention; Firearms
Language: en |