When you are hospitalized, you may encounter a variety of threats to your health, including the possibility of an infection or being victimized by a medical blunder. And now researchers at Brown University are alarmed about another danger.
According to the researchers, hospital security around the country is inadequate. On an average of more than once a month, someone enters a hospital with a firearm and shoots one or more people.
“We would like to think that hospitals are not an area that would be subject to harm, and maybe that’s why we want them to be free and accessible and not overly secure like a fortress,” says researcher Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University. “But I think times are changing.”
In 2014, there were 14 incidents at U.S. hospitals where shooters entered hospitals and opened fire. These shootings killed 15 people. A 2012 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine shows that these incidents have been occurring once a month or more for several years.
From 2000 to 2005, there were about nine shootings a year at hospitals. The rate jumped to more than 16 between 2006 and 2011. During these years, 161 people were killed in these shootings.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has now put out guidelines requiring health care facilities to adopt active shooter planning into emergency action plans. To be accredited by the department, each facility must have a plan in place.
The researchers at Brown conclude that hospitals must put in better lighting, more surveillance cameras, panic buttons, metal detectors and more armed guards at their facilities.
