In 2010, a patient’s relative shot a physician at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore before locking himself in his mother’s patient room and fatally shooting her and himself. Following the shooting, a Baltimore Sun report pointed out the hospital did not have metal detectors like so many airports, courthouses and federal buildings do.
Despite the hospital just having suffered a traumatic incident, Johns Hopkins officials argued that it would be impossible to impose such security restrictions on a weekly stream of roughly 80,000 patients and visitors and still remain welcoming to patients, according to the report.
That said, hospitals aren’t entirely unprepared either. Many hospital employees — including those at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — receive emergency preparedness training for incidents such as active shooters.
Ron Walls, MD, Brigham’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, told The Boston Globe Brigham was one of the first hospitals in the country to train staff on how to respond to an “active shooter” situation, working with the Boston police.
Brigham President Elizabeth G. Nabel, MD, told The Boston Globe, “I am extremely proud of the way our staff responded.”
The Advisory Board Company published a “How to survive a hospital shooting” training guide in May 2014 with information on how to react to the threat depending on proximity to the active shooter and how to provide care during an active shooter situation.
Healthcare workers do everything in their power to make sure people are safe and healthy, so hospital-related shootings present a difficult, albeit rare, challenge.
Having precautions in places that aren’t overly costly or inconvenient and having a staff trained in emergency preparedness will, hopefully, never have to come in handy. But recent events in hospitals nationwide suggest these precautions should be considered by every hospital executive nonetheless.
