JPS Journal Club: July 2019 Part 1

Hey everyone. This is Alex Gassar with State Current, and today we are reviewing the July issue of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery. As we were looking through the issue, uh we found two big articles that are APPSA position statements uh that we really wanted to cover. Uh first we're going to have Dr. Alex Gibbons, uh talking about firearm injury. So yeah, I just wanted to kind of highlight some of the the main points of the firearm injury prevention. So the first one is kind of obvious is that firearm injury is trauma and should be evaluated by the trauma system and that injury prevention should be considered part of that trauma system as well. Okay, firearms and it's an entity that's managed by some it's an entity that needs to be recognized by the trauma service. Right. Number two. Number two is that firearm injuries are public health issue and so should be treated as such. Not a political issue, something that uh is an epidemic and everyone should uh treat it that way. I love it, treating it like a disease, public health issue. Okay, number three. Number three is that we should make have better access for mental health services to both children and adults. Absolutely love that. It's something that we probably haven't paid attention to enough in the past. Uh mental health issues related to gun violence. Number four. Number four is that we should have universal background checks for all firearm sales, even ones that from private dealers at gun shows. Great. Number four is very interesting, APSA clearly taking a a position on background checks, which could be debated by some others, but this is being treated as a public health issue and the belief that background checks would decrease the number of childhood injuries related to guns. Number five. So number five is talking about research funding and the Dicky Amendment and saying that there shouldn't be any barriers to firearm uh research from the CDC. Great. Love that. re removing barriers to uh funding that might happen from political stances. Number six. Number six is another one that has a definitely a political side to it, but it's that uh APPSA supports uh banning of assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Okay. Number seven. That one's political. Yeah, definitely. Number seven is uh APPSA strongly supporting the use of child access prevention laws and making sure that guns are safely stored to prevent access to firearms to children. All right, number eight. Uh number eight is uh supporting a minimum age to purchase firearms of 21 years instead of 18 or even sometimes even no age restriction in some states for some guns. Okay, age restrictions. Number nine. Uh number nine is um opposing uh in the strongest possible terms, um any uh restriction of physicians to talk about firearms with their patients. Okay, and this was uh an interesting one that was battled up at the Supreme Court. So the fact that we are allowed to absolutely ask about firearms in the house. Number 10. So number 10 is talking about um supporting uh readiness for school shooter situations, making sure that schools are prepared. Um opposing arming teachers, which is uh recent proposal from in the political sphere, and also encouraging uh stop the bleed training for everybody. Any civilian should have access to stop the bleed training. It should be similar to training for Heimlich maneuvers and CPR because that can save somebody's life. Interesting. So addressing school preparedness against teachers arming and uh really reinforcing stop the bleed. Um and finally, number 11. So rounding it out with a nice even number 11, um we APPSA supports uh research in the second victim syndrome for both survivors and for healthcare uh providers in these situations. So this is providing emotional support for those who take care of these patients? Right, and other victims uh who may experience PTSD. They may be survivors of gun violence or just have been witness at the scene. I see. Great. This was the first of three videos in which we'll be reviewing the July issue of JPS. Stay tuned in the next two weeks to see what else we have to discuss.