Study: Doctors can help provide gun safety resources for kids’ sake

By Christen Smith

Gun-related injuries hospitalize 20 children and adolescents daily, according to a review published in the June 2017 edition of Hospital Pediatrics, prompting some doctors to promote open communication between gun owners and medical practitioners.
Fatalities involving firearms are one of the top four leading causes of death for American youth, according to the article “Pediatric Firearm-Related Injuries in the United States,” with more than 4,500 under the age of 21 dying in 2015.
“As a pediatrician and a parent, I am acutely aware of the number of children who suffer injuries or who die from firearms, and I find the rate of firearm injury and death among children and adolescents in this country alarming,” said lead author Dr. Kavita Parikh, associate professor of pediatrics at Children’s National Health System. “Fundamentally, we want to empower pediatricians and hospitalists to get involved with reducing firearm-related injuries to children in this country.”
Assault injuries comprised nearly two-thirds of admissions for patients younger than 20 and less than 4 percent were hospitalized for suicide attempts. About 75 percent of children 10 and younger admitted for gun-related injuries were unintentional, while almost 67 percent of adolescents aged 15 to 19 suffered injuries during an assault with a firearm.
Parikh

Source: Guns.com