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Clash over doctors asking patients about firearms

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PokerGuy said:
WTF? I'd never even heard of this before.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-05-13-nra-doctors-guns_n.htm

I disagree with the laws banning doctors from asking about firearms or anything else for that matter. We don't need more government regulation of what consenting adults can or can't talk about, but I can't think of any logical reason why any doctor would need to ask about firearms in the home.

Why does my doctor need to talk to me about safety? Does my mechanic talk about my lawn? Does my financial adviser talk about my cable modem? The doctor is there to provide medical advice/service/expertise, not as a "safety" consultant.

If my doctor asked me if I had firearms in my home I'd tell him that it's none of his business and to STFU.
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I can understand why a shrink might ask that question of a severely depressed or otherwise mentally ill patient. Otherwise I don't see how that information is relevant their job.
 
PokerGuy said:
So each pediatrician visit should be scheduled to be 12 hours long now, considering there are probably a million direct dangers to the welfare of the child in every household. Your visit should include discussion on (among other things): child safety seats in cars, putting away knives, keeping household chemicals out of reach, making sure glass objects that can be grabbed and broken are out of reach, covering electric outlets, making sure no matches are present, keeping guns safely out of reach, keeping drugs out of reach, making sure fire extinguishers are ready and charged etc etc etc.

If I need safety tips I'll talk to a safety expert, people don't go to the doctor for safety tips, they go for medical care. Talking about gun safety is not health or medical advice or care, and saying "make sure the gun is locked away safely" is useless, it's common sense and if someone is too dumb to already apply it hearing the doctor say it doesn't change anything.

Or, we could go the logical route: doctors talk about what they know -- medical issues. Imagine that!
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Or we just go the logical route where doctors give new parents some common sense safety precautions as opposed to having them separately visit a 'safety expert'. Think of it as more bang for your buck. If you don't like it be sure to pre-screen doctors, you can probably ask their appointment staff if the doctor is going to give you any safety advice and then keep looking until you find one that won't.

This conversation is retarded, as is this topic.
 
Don't like what the doctor is asking, tell him/her that it's none of their business. If they persist, find another doctor (same line that was given about the pharmacist who refused to issue certain kinds of drugs...find a new one).
 
Fear No Evil said:
Imagine this scenario. Your primary care physician asks you if you engage in unprotected gay sex. You refuse to answer. He then refuses to treat you as a patient again. I bet MANY people on the left would take issue with that. Is it illegal to ask? No. Is it a valid question for him to provide medical advice? Probably. But could it be construed as a possible attack against gay people? Yeah, I think it could. And I think the people a Doctor asking that question to could have issues with it, could question the Doctor's motives, and might even seek a lawyers advice.
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That's a good point, so of course no one on the left will respond to it.
 
All this talk of Dr.'s spending time to talk with patients about general safety tips is stupid.

They need to stick to their job and not wasts time and money on this. We're paying for their time, people don't go to Dr's for gun saftey, or any other type non-medical tip.

We've a shortage of Dr's as is.

Would you be happy if your CPA started up a convo about gun or driving safety tips and charged you $200 per hr for it?

Having a law against the Dr doing this is equally stupid.

Fern
 
Fern said:
All this talk of Dr.'s spending time to talk with patients about general safety tips is stupid.

They need to stick to their job and not wasts time and money on this. We're paying for their time, people don't go to Dr's for gun saftey, or any other type non-medical tip.

We've a shortage of Dr's as is.

Would you be happy if your CPA started up a convo about gun or driving safety tips and charged you $200 per hr for it?

Having a law against the Dr doing this is equally stupid.

Fern
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Doctors don't charge by the hour, they charge by the visit/procedure.

If you don't like safety tips from a doctor, visit a different one.
 
eskimospy said:
Yes, doctors should be asking questions about high risk behaviors and offering advice on how to mitigate them.

A doctor can refuse treatment to whoever he wants, but the consequences of that refusal can and should be the potential loss of his or her license. (unless he has a very good reason)
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That is absurdly foolish as it is outside of the doctors realm of expertise. I get on roofs for a living, it is a high risk behavior (and my insurance company constantly reminds me of that every time they send me a bill). A lot of the risk involved can and is mitigated by following specific safety guidelines and using proper PPEs. I have never in my entire life even heard about a doctor that could give me adequate advice on how to safely measure a 10/12 roof, much less how to actually work on one, and if one did (and isn't working for someone trying to sell me safety equipment or something of the sort) I would immediately terminate any relationship I had with him or her. It simply is not their area of expertise. You can claim all the "well being, mitigating high risk behaviors, risk, etc.." bullshit you want to but the bottom line is that 99.9% of doctors are simply not qualified to give advice on how to effectively mitigate those dangers. The few that are qualified to give advice about mitigating specific non-medial dangers almost always work in that specific field (which would be why they learned it in the first place).

Then you have the small issue of responsibility. Most doctors are fairly intelligent and understand the concept of litigation. When you start giving professional advice on a subject that you have no formal training in you put yourself at great risk of being sued if something beyond your control goes wrong.

Lastly, the good doctor would save far more lives if he educated parents on how to properly child proof their bathrooms/bathtubs then he ever would with guns. Same thing with pools, stairs, tires, and a slew of other things. It is simply impossible for one person to be an expert on all of that so I would question why he/she chose the least dangerous of those.

Of course he could have a big ass checklist in which he asks if they have gotten professional help on X issue and if not he suggests they do so. If that is the case then I don't really have a problem with it but it would have to be one long ass list and his time would probably be better spent handing them a pamphlet and working on medical stuff.
 
eskimospy said:
Doctors don't charge by the hour, they charge by the visit/procedure.

If you don't like safety tips from a doctor, visit a different one.
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It is irrelevant if I like safety tips from them or not. The question is are they qualified to give those safety tips to me. They are a professional that people must blindly trust above almost (if not all) others. I would get my ass sued off if I started giving safety advice on how to properly work on steep sloped roofs and I have over a decade experience doing just that.

Its really very simple, would you accept medical advice from the person teaching you gun safety? If you are even slightly intelligent the answer is no, the reverse is also true. The expertise isn't even in the same game.
 
Engineer said:
Don't like what the doctor is asking, tell him/her that it's none of their business. If they persist, find another doctor (same line that was given about the pharmacist who refused to issue certain kinds of drugs...find a new one).
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Now this I agree with. I just don't think its a good idea on the doctors part nor is it a good idea to argue that they should be giving such advice. I do believe that they are free to do so as long as the accept the associated risk and patients are free to not do business with them if they disagree with their doctor giving them advice that is not within their field of expertise. Beyond that the State licensing board can deal with it.
 
Darwin333 said:
That is absurdly foolish as it is outside of the doctors realm of expertise. I get on roofs for a living, it is a high risk behavior (and my insurance company constantly reminds me of that every time they send me a bill). A lot of the risk involved can and is mitigated by following specific safety guidelines and using proper PPEs. I have never in my entire life even heard about a doctor that could give me adequate advice on how to safely measure a 10/12 roof, much less how to actually work on one, and if one did (and isn't working for someone trying to sell me safety equipment or something of the sort) I would immediately terminate any relationship I had with him or her. It simply is not their area of expertise. You can claim all the "well being, mitigating high risk behaviors, risk, etc.." bullshit you want to but the bottom line is that 99.9% of doctors are simply not qualified to give advice on how to effectively mitigate those dangers. The few that are qualified to give advice about mitigating specific non-medial dangers almost always work in that specific field (which would be why they learned it in the first place).

Then you have the small issue of responsibility. Most doctors are fairly intelligent and understand the concept of litigation. When you start giving professional advice on a subject that you have no formal training in you put yourself at great risk of being sued if something beyond your control goes wrong.

Lastly, the good doctor would save far more lives if he educated parents on how to properly child proof their bathrooms/bathtubs then he ever would with guns. Same thing with pools, stairs, tires, and a slew of other things. It is simply impossible for one person to be an expert on all of that so I would question why he/she chose the least dangerous of those.

Of course he could have a big ass checklist in which he asks if they have gotten professional help on X issue and if not he suggests they do so. If that is the case then I don't really have a problem with it but it would have to be one long ass list and his time would probably be better spent handing them a pamphlet and working on medical stuff.
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What the hell is wrong with you people? He's not trying to tell people how to fix a roof, the example in the article is him saying something to the effect of 'be sure to keep guns away from your kids'. You don't need to be an expert in anything to do that, you idiots just read 'OMIGOD GUNS ARE IN TROUBLE' and flipped out over nothing.

Doctors also frequently tell people to be sure to keep plastic bags and sharp objects out of the reach of kids, they tell people to install barriers at the top of stairs, things like that. Think, for years doctors have been doing this without being sharp-object-ologists or professional stair blockers. It's a scandal I tell you!

I've got a fantastic idea, why don't you let the doctor decide how his time is best spent preserving the health of his patients, considering he deals with them every day. You can stick with measuring the roof of his clinic. Don't think I didn't catch the irony of you proclaiming how incapable he would be of telling you how to do your job while simultaneously telling him how to do his.

You guys are an embarrassment to people like myself who try and convince anti-gun people about responsible protection of the 2nd amendment. There's a reason why the term 'gun nuts' has stuck so well, and it's because people act crazy when the subject comes up.
 
Just like people have the right to bear arms, they also have the right to say anything they want to.

If a patient wants to own a gun, he/she is able to do so.

If a doctor wants to ask a question, he/she should be able to do so.


The issue of guns can be tangentially related to health, so while I think it is an odd question for a doc to ask, I can understand. I can also understand that some patients would feel uncomfortable if their doctor asked such a question. Such patients are free to find another doctor.


No need to get the law involved
 
Well if you are current on gun issues this is old news. Join the NRA and you will get daily emails on all these kinds of things.

It's not so much patients as pediatricians denying care for those that answer "Yes, I have guns at home".

They are trying to push an agenda by leveraging a child's health over it.
 
alkemyst said:
Well if you are current on gun issues this is old news. Join the NRA and you will get daily emails on all these kinds of things.

It's not so much patients as pediatricians denying care for those that answer "Yes, I have guns at home".

They are trying to push an agenda by leveraging a child's health over it.
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Can you show a case where a pediatrician has refused to treat a child because his parents had a gun in the home? If someone has, that's absolutely the wrong thing to do. That's not what this thread was about though.
 
eskimospy said:
What the hell is wrong with you people? He's not trying to tell people how to fix a roof, the example in the article is him saying something to the effect of 'be sure to keep guns away from your kids'. You don't need to be an expert in anything to do that, you idiots just read 'OMIGOD GUNS ARE IN TROUBLE' and flipped out over nothing.

Doctors also frequently tell people to be sure to keep plastic bags and sharp objects out of the reach of kids, they tell people to install barriers at the top of stairs, things like that. Think, for years doctors have been doing this without being sharp-object-ologists or professional stair blockers. It's a scandal I tell you!

I've got a fantastic idea, why don't you let the doctor decide how his time is best spent preserving the health of his patients, considering he deals with them every day. You can stick with measuring the roof of his clinic. Don't think I didn't catch the irony of you proclaiming how incapable he would be of telling you how to do your job while simultaneously telling him how to do his.
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So are you saying that he is not qualified to give me professional advice on how to safely "measure the roof of his clinic" but he is qualified to give me professional advice on how to safely operate and store firearms?

I am having dinner with a doctor tonight and I am going to ask his opinion on this issue. Perhaps I am completely wrong and doctors should be giving professional advice on topics they have no professional training on.

And for the record, I wasn't "telling him how to do his job" I was simply stating the responsibility that goes along with giving professional advice. It is quite simply irresponsible to give professional advice on a subject that you have no professional training and/or experience in. I would think that even you would agree with that. I also stated that it would be foolish for a patient to not question that advice, or would you take medical advice from some guy "measuring your roof"?
 
PrinceofWands said:
As already shown, not always an option. Even where it is, it places an undue burden on the consumer, when the doctor is at fault for instigating a needless action.
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While that may be true, would you really want your doctor to be "forced" into providing service to you knowing full well that he does not want to? I sure as hell wouldn't.

I have not and am not disagree with the doctors right to ask the question, the State licensing board should be competent enough to do that, I am simply questioning the doctors judgment.
 
Darwin333 said:
While that may be true, would you really want your doctor to be "forced" into providing service to you knowing full well that he does not want to? I sure as hell wouldn't.

I have not and am not disagree with the doctors right to ask the question, the State licensing board should be competent enough to do that, I am simply questioning the doctors judgment.
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Then he should get out of medicine, and into politics or firearm safety courses. A doctor is to do EXACTLY one thing - provide medical services. If I come in with a gunshot wound, by all means ask how it happened. If not, piss the fuck off. His role in my life is limited to ONLY that one thing...medicine. Nothing else. Not safety, not politics, not morality - medicine.
 
eskimospy said:
Can you show a case where a pediatrician has refused to treat a child because his parents had a gun in the home? If someone has, that's absolutely the wrong thing to do. That's not what this thread was about though.
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Dude you need to do some reading. A pediatrician is not an emergency service. If they turned you down already, why'd you bring your kid back to them instead of an ER (yeah it's an ED today...)
 
i would have to ask my doctor what business that is of his and what that has to do with my kids illness and refuse to answer.

They should not be asking. it has nothing to do with why we are there (well unless the kid was there for a gun shot heh)
 
waggy said:
i would have to ask my doctor what business that is of his and what that has to do with my kids illness and refuse to answer.

They should not be asking. it has nothing to do with why we are there (well unless the kid was there for a gun shot heh)
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I wonder how a Doctor would act if you asked him about his personal finances and health. After all, if he's not well or in severe debt that could impact his ability to perform his job properly and care for your child.
 
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