Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Medicine is hosting the first-ever national symposium for healthcare providers to better prepare for hospital shootings, according to a JHM news release.
The symposium "Active Shooter Incidents in Hospitals and Health Care Settings" will take place April 11 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront. It will feature experts in medicine, law, ethics, hospital security and law enforcement from around the nation. The ethical complexities of shooters in hospitals — a situation that has occurred several times in recent years — will also be explored.
Symposium organizers have noted that in recent years, law enforcement experts have recommended that students, office workers or others confronted with an active shooter should decide on their own whether to run, hide or fight, depending on their individual circumstances. But those options do not address the complex responsibilities hospital-based nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers have when caring for vulnerable patients, including the elderly, children, the very ill or incapacitated, according to the release.
The symposium will also include a consensus panel that will discuss ideas for a potential set of guidelines that hospital leaders could use to shape their own institutional policies regarding healthcare providers' responses to active shooters.
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