UMass Medical students join SAFE call for gun violence prevention

Where did these freaking morons get their stats from? According to the CDC, in 2017 over 40,000 people died in vehicular deaths. That's MORE than the amount of gun deaths. Edit: National Safety Council stats
 
I think those questions are invasive and unnecessary, could lead to unwanted BS down the road, so I take the easy route and tell them there are no guns at home and let them move on to the next question

More invasive than a finger up the butt?? [rofl] I understand your concern but they can be important questions to ask when a PCP actually gives a shit about their patient outside their billed 15 minute visit. Especially when the patient or members of the household have certain mental disorders.

Whether you want to give the physician that information or not is your right but I don't believe most physicians are asking with the backdoor intent of screwing you in terms of your right to carry.
 
More invasive than a finger up the butt?? [rofl] I understand your concern but they can be important questions to ask when a PCP actually gives a shit about their patient outside their billed 15 minute visit. Especially when the patient or members of the household have certain mental disorders.

Whether you want to give the physician that information or not is your right but I don't believe most physicians are asking with the backdoor intent of screwing you in terms of your right to carry.

You're right. They don't care. But what they write down is part of your medical record. And the insurance company sees that. And at the very LEAST the government sees either anonymized or aggregated data. And 10 years from now, when Mrs. Greekfreak files for divorce and full custody, or even worse you have an accidental discharge at the range that wounds the guy in the next lane and your full name William Joseph Greekfreak is plastered on all the antigun websites (CNN, NYT, etc.), THEN it matters.

Whether there is a gun in the house, you use seat belts, whatever is NOT RELEVANT to providing patient care. Even drinking or smoking is BARELY relevant. These are lifestyle choices and are of interest only to ourselves and our loved ones.

The doc should be asking what hurts most, today?. When did that growth crop up on your neck? That sort of thing.

PS. If your real name happens to be William Joseph, my apologies. I was trying to make a wisecrack about how these CNN villains always have spelled out middle names.
 
You're right. They don't care. But what they write down is part of your medical record. And the insurance company sees that. And at the very LEAST the government sees either anonymized or aggregated data. And 10 years from now, when Mrs. Greekfreak files for divorce and full custody, or even worse you have an accidental discharge at the range that wounds the guy in the next lane and your full name William Joseph Greekfreak is plastered on all the antigun websites (CNN, NYT, etc.), THEN it matters.

Whether there is a gun in the house, you use seat belts, whatever is NOT RELEVANT to providing patient care. Even drinking or smoking is BARELY relevant. These are lifestyle choices and are of interest only to ourselves and our loved ones.

The doc should be asking what hurts most, today?. When did that growth crop up on your neck? That sort of thing.

PS. If your real name happens to be William Joseph, my apologies. I was trying to make a wisecrack about how these CNN villains always have spelled out middle names.

LOL I kind of like William Joseph now.

I hear you about the gun thing, don't agree in cases where mental health is an issue, but I get the concern regarding who gets access to that information....but that really applies to anything personal in your medical record.

Now.....you COMPLETELY lost me with the drinking and smoking lol a physician that just treats acute symptoms as they pop up is absolutely useless. The whole purpose of the PCP is to take a holistic approach to your health, identify lifestyle choices that contribute to your problems, and send you to those specific specialists that are experts in that growth on your neck or that pain in your leg (which may not even be caused by an issue in the leg!) as needed.

You can't walk in to see your PCP as a two pack a day smoker with emphysema and ask them to just treat the symptoms you notice that day.....well you can but the first thing they'll urge you to do is stop smoking [laugh] your lifestyle is part of your health. If you're catching STDs every other month, your lifestyle choice to stick it raw anywhere it fits is relevant to your medical history. Again, its your right not to share that information with your physician, but just don't expect to receive effective care in return.
 
LOL I kind of like William Joseph now.

I hear you about the gun thing, don't agree in cases where mental health is an issue, but I get the concern regarding who gets access to that information....but that really applies to anything personal in your medical record.

Now.....you COMPLETELY lost me with the drinking and smoking lol a physician that just treats acute symptoms as they pop up is absolutely useless. The whole purpose of the PCP is to take a holistic approach to your health, identify lifestyle choices that contribute to your problems, and send you to those specific specialists that are experts in that growth on your neck or that pain in your leg (which may not even be caused by an issue in the leg!) as needed.

You can't walk in to see your PCP as a two pack a day smoker with emphysema and ask them to just treat the symptoms you notice that day.....well you can but the first thing they'll urge you to do is stop smoking [laugh] your lifestyle is part of your health. If you're catching STDs every other month, your lifestyle choice to stick it raw anywhere it fits is relevant to your medical history. Again, its your right not to share that information with your physician, but just don't expect to receive effective care in return.

Walk in with lung issues like that and smoking is relevant data. Your seat belts are not and never will be. Guns neither.

I'm not guessing about the data. It does bubble up. As a minor data point, did you know when you're admitted to a hospital that the other hospitals in the state are notified?
 
As a medical student at UMass, six months from becoming a physician, I cannot say how much I appreciate your candid and rational reply. Please know, NES community, that not all of us, or even the majority, are left wing moonbats. I’m happy to answer any questions or comments you all have of our profession, from what I’ve seen there is a significant animosity against the medical profession on NES, and while plenty of us are quite liberal, not all of us are. In any case, we all will treat you (hopefully) the same. I laughed at some of the comments here about CT scans and how we make our money. Could not be more true. The system is beyond broken, but know some of us hope to fix it or at least work within the system to provide for our patients the right way.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease and we live in a very polarized society in an even more polarized state. There are plenty of us here that are moderate or conservative, and regardless of our “political” leanings are logical intelligent individuals who support common sense firearms laws that protect law abiding citizens instead of penalizing them and believe in 2A. How many of us I can’t quantify, since we keep to our own group and try not to scream back since it gets nowhere and we aren’t convincing our classmates of our positions. Do I think I would face professional reprisals if I were vocally 2A and my colleagues knew the collection I have in my safes? Yes. Do I care? No. I pick my battles where I can though and always stand for what I believe in. They don’t pay my bills, and lord knows I have more than enough debt from medical school and Uncle Sam did not cover a fraction of what I thought he would, but I served anyways because I believe in this experiment of democracy and freedom known as America. Are those in this (likely minority) few? Maybe. But if you need a physician who cuts to the chase, doesn’t waste your or his/her time with bullshit, and you can trust will go every last damn mile to get you the right care, send me a PM. I’ll be enrolling patients starting in July, and hope to serve all of you, and continue to serve our country.
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Thanks for your otherwise well worded response here. Would you not say there is significant animosity towards freedom and liberty believing gun owners from the medical profession, at least at UMass Medical? We're not trying to take away their medical practices.


... and your full name William Joseph Greekfreak is plastered on all the antigun websites (CNN, NYT, etc.), THEN it matters.

Whether there is a gun in the house, you use seat belts, whatever is NOT RELEVANT to providing patient care. Even drinking or smoking is BARELY relevant. These are lifestyle choices and are of interest only to ourselves and our loved ones.

The doc should be asking what hurts most, today?. When did that growth crop up on your neck? That sort of thing.

PS. If your real name happens to be William Joseph, my apologies. I was trying to make a wisecrack about how these CNN villains always have spelled out middle names.

LOL I kind of like William Joseph now. ...

I was thinking maybe more like Spiros Nicholas or something.
 
Everything in moderation... but excessive drinking or smoking in general does play a major role in your healthcare. Your doctors aren’t out to get you, if you have one that you feel is out to get you just switch providers. To make this extremely over simplified and black and white: If someone was a lifetime smoker who had certain new symptoms he would be getting a CT of his chest, if that same patient wasn’t a smoker or had me convinced he never smoked I’d be less concerned to order expensive workups initially. Well maybe I just missed lung cancer because it didn’t seem likely. We should always be weighing risks vs benefits for any test or image study, be honest to your doctors so they can do their job.

If I ever ask a patient about firearms in the home it’s to ensure we are following safe storing and handling practices. Don’t be asinine and say gun owners are all safe individuals, before the USMC allows someone to fire a rifle they spend all of first phase running around handling clearing doing the manual of arms and yelling “bang bang” with it. To get an LTC you just need to submit some papers and take a kindergarten level PowerPoint lecture on safety. Since most people see a PCP, it’s a good place to implement population-level health and discuss preventative medicine and general safety to reinforce things. If everyone followed the four rules I’m sure the antis would have less fodder to use against 2A.

Because of the current climate in this country it’s not something I would care to document unless there was a real clinical reason to do so. Mental health and firearms is its own category if someone is a legitimate risk to themself or others. Hopefully we can all agree on that much.

Asking about seatbelts is the result of the good-idea fairy. It’s clearly important to your safety and health were you to have an accident, which isn’t a rare risk, but it’s most likely that simply asking that safety question gets no improved outcomes. In the “15 minute” PCP visit it’s probably a waste of valuable time but because of the good idea fairy we drill these and other seemingly inane questions into medical students early and often. Hopefully we learn to prioritize with real world practice and weed out the less useful things.

The gun questions are in no way related to the patients medical condition. If they keep loaded pistols under every cushion in the house it might be a violation of the law (in Mass, anyway, not in most states), but it doesn't relate to the healthcare question.

I understand that many/most providers are just trying to understand the patient as a whole but you are not the final user of the data. The data IS mined by others and they aren't necessarily friendly to gun owners. If you think the downstream data consumers are not mining your data for their own purposes you are sadly mistaken.
 
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We’re on the same page here brother, just saying not all of the white coats are the enemy and trying to take your guns away.

I know. It's less the doctors I have concern about as it is the misuse of that data once it leaves your office.

I know dozens of doctors and almost all are standup people. **

The Boogeyman isn't in the office. He's lurking in the background, to be a little melodramatic.

** Most cops are fine people too. Lawyers, though... There's no hope for them!
 
... trust ... crucial to a good provider patient relationship and things frequently lost in contemporary healthcare as your provider stares at a computer screen during the entire visit and clicks check-boxes for the medical record.

We’re on the same page here brother, just saying not all of the white coats are the enemy and trying to take your guns away.

I was going to kid, and say we should have kiosks, like McDonalds has now. Then I remembered that at my last visit to Reliant, they handed me a tablet with questions. I did a few of them, then just handed it back to them. They didn't mention anything. So, next time, I'm just going to take it, hang onto it a while, and hand it back. Why give some data-mining place MY INFO, that will only get stolen and used AGAINST MY WILL? No longer playing in that game. The relationships have been severed, and it would take a LOT to regain any TRUST at all.
 
Okay, then riddle me this one TPNES,
Isn't this half the problem today with these non related questions asked simply to be in compliance with a government or administrative standard?

Do you not understand that many of those that feel they need medical help mentally are put off by seeking it due to the possibility of becoming a PP in one fashion of another because of the information being entered into a database or in other words data mining for the government. Why would I admit to my doc or you for that matter as a future doc, that I'm run down/depressed or I feel anger all the time or that my marriage is on the rocks and my wife is with another guy or any one of a million personal issues knowing full well that some bureaucrat, somewhere, may at some point, use that information to curtail my rights by putting me on a no fly list or some other "Schindler's" listing without foundation?

I'm not knocking you, Umass students, your profession specifically but there is a point of non-compliance if you want to build a working relationship with your future patients.

For those wondering how I answer the do you own firearms question, I've been writing in "Don't you?"
 
This thread delivers. I’m an 07 and have sold to fellow coworkers and doctors and find it amazing to see how many enjoy modding and shooting their non-FUDD guns. There may be a lot of antis in the field, but I have noticed more RNs getting their LTCs.

On the topic, this SAFE group sounds like overzealous students who have never even touched a gun and want to make their anti-2A professors proud. There’s always an ass ready to be kissed and it looks like they’ve puckered up well.

In time, some of them will realize that the same group who believes they mean well regarding guns is the same group who will increase their taxes and restrict other rights.
 
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