J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2023 Oct 13. doi: 10.1097/TA.0000000000004175. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

In urban, large metropolitan trauma centers we are accustomed to seeing the most gruesome morbidity and mortality in medicine. By far the most devastating morbidity and mortality to observe is that inflicted on one human being to another. Gun violence is pervasive in this industrialized country, and it impacts us all. Staff, residents, and faculty in trauma centers bear the brunt of this trauma, second only to the families and communities which suffer the loss of loved ones. This burden is especially heavy for health care workers who share the same ethnic background of those who are disproportionately affected by interpersonal gun violence. Survivors of gun violence exist on a spectrum of chronic illness. An illness that ranges in physical and mental morbidity and social disruption in loss of wages and capabilities. This disease not only infects those wounded or killed, but it also transmits through communities and generations. Urban violence exists because of historic and systematic racism. It continues to persist because racism creates inequities in the quality of education, housing, and investment in urban environments, exacerbated by residential segregation. For two providers, a trainee and a faculty member of African descent, conscious of the determinants which create gun violence, it is overwhelming. We, as health care providers must tell our stories and the stories of those whose voices are not empowered. We can hope that by sharing these experiences we stimulate action and change by raising the moral conscious of those unaware of the tragedies we witness every day.

PMID:37828663 | DOI:10.1097/TA.0000000000004175