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Abstract
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Blando et al. [1] highlighted in their recent cross-sectional survey that "metal detectors are an important and effective intervention" due to their ability to assumedly reduce healthcare workplace violence. However, we write today as Black physicians with academic expertise in antiracism with several concerns regarding the paper's central premise, design, and conclusions.
We, the authors, value the ultimate goal of hospital security protocols to reduce the incidence and severity of healthcare violence. Nonetheless, this paper relies upon the premise that armed violence is a leading cause of hospital assaults and that reducing weapons entering hospital grounds through metal detectors successfully mitigates that risk. Although healthcare violence is distressingly common, Kelen characterized US hospital-based shootings from 2000 to 2011 [2], and concluded that less than 2% of all workplace shootings involved the healthcare sector. Indeed, they calculated a greater statistical likelihood of being struck and killed by lightning than being the victim of a hospital shooting.
Authors use the number of weapons confiscated by metal detectors as an inaccurate proxy for the ultimate desired outcome of any hospital safety campaign: effectual reductions in workplace violence. However, none of the sources cited within this paper lend measured evidence regarding the efficacy of metal detectors in reducing actual incidences of hospital violence, armed or otherwise. For example, the paper's introduction cites a 1999 study by Rankins [3] showing that the implementation of emergency department metal detectors doubled the number of weapons confiscated from patients, yet failed to significantly decrease the number of armed or unarmed assaults at all. Beyond this insignificant finding, no other cited study measures the end objective of reduced hospital assaults whatsoever. Moreover, even if metal detectors were in place, Kelen determined that the determined motives behind hospital shooters meant that less than half of shootings occurring inside a hospital might have been thwarted by metal detectors...
Language: en |