“I’m an ICU nurse and that is my greatest concern,” learn one of many many messages I acquired on social media final weekend after a gunman opened fire at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, killing two nurses. Studying these messages made my coronary heart sink and my pulse race on the identical time.
I’m a working towards basic inner drugs doctor, and although I’ve met a few of the bravest people in drugs, we’ve reached a tipping level. Individuals in my occupation are scared. With gun violence on the rise alongside harmful, anti-science misinformation about well being care, we’re consistently left worrying about what might occur to us, even after we ought to be centered on the well being of our sufferers. The Dallas capturing isn’t the primary time this has occurred. This previous June, 4 individuals – together with three hospital workers – had been killed by a shooter at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Simply a few weeks in the past, a man visiting a Little Rock, Arkansas hospital was killed by an acquaintance, according to police, in a seemingly random act of violence.
This all comes on the heels of a nationwide rise in violence against medical workers. Greater than 8-in-10 emergency physicians have reported that violence of their workplaces has elevated, with 45 percent noting a spike in incidents previously 5 years. Nationally, there have been 656 mass shootings this yr alone — over 2 a day. In 2020, over 45,000 people died from gun-related accidents, together with suicide and homicide.
So as to add additional damage to insult, well being care staff are more and more working below draconian, political restrictions because of the over-politicization of well being care. Abortion is now unlawful or closely restricted in at least t12 states, with extra making an attempt to go bans. Consequently, lifesaving medication are being denied to sufferers as a result of they might have an abortive impact. These legal guidelines have left docs with a minefield of authorized and moral dilemmas as they try to ship the care sufferers want, whereas not risking arrest or different repercussions.
Our nation’s well being care staff deserve extra than simply our phrases of assist. They deserve motion, and there’s one thing we will do.
In March 2018, I used to be the lead organizer of the March For Our Lives rally in San Francisco which drew an estimated 75,000 individuals to Metropolis Corridor. I can let you know that there’s actually energy when individuals come collectively round a shared imaginative and prescient. Simply following the Feb. 14, 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College in Parkland, Florida, I went on social media to see what was deliberate for our metropolis and located nothing. So, I created an occasion on-line and invited associates to affix college students at San Francisco Metropolis Corridor to assist the nationwide motion. To my shock, inside 48 hours, we had over 25,000 individuals RSVP to attend. I used to be shocked once I stood on that stage to introduce the unbelievable pupil activists — and took in a sea of individuals for so far as I might see.
This coming election requires the identical stage of assist and bravado that these 75,000 individuals confirmed on the streets of San Francisco. Individuals across the nation want it, together with your docs, nurses and different well being care staff. This implies voting for frequent sense gun legal guidelines reinstituting the assault weapons ban, crimson flag legal guidelines which permits for non permanent elimination of firearms from an individual who’s believed to be a hazard to others or themselves and common background checks. However it additionally means voting for freedom.
As Election Day shortly approaches, make no mistake, freedom is on the poll. Extra than simply the liberty to decide on, a vote for Democrats is a vote for freedom from politicians making your medical selections for you. A vote for Democrats is a vote for frequent sense gun legal guidelines that maintain gun violence out of our communities — whether or not it’s hospitals, colleges or locations of worship. Lastly, a vote for Democrats is a vote for governance that respects science, so medical professionals, like me, can really feel protected whereas doing our jobs.
It doesn’t must be this fashion. Now we have the chance this November to chart a course that may construct safer, stronger communities. Now we have the flexibility to safe our freedoms and shield alternative, whereas defending docs, nurses and different well being care staff from violence.
Vote correctly.
Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, is an inner drugs doctor in San Francisco, host of “TED Well being” and the founding father of endwellproject.org
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