By Christina Orlovsky, senior writer
With school violence rearing its head from
Washington state to Pennsylvania—and everywhere in between—school officials
across the United States are seeking ways to prevent future attacks. One
interactive program invites an innovative team of professionals—police officers
and health care practitioners—to open students’ eyes to the legal and medical
repercussions of violent actions.
For the past six years, physicians and nurses at St. Clare
Hospital, in Lakewood, Washington, and St. Francis Hospital, in Federal Way,
Washington, both Seattle suburbs, have taken part in a community effort to
reduce school violence by partnering with area police in a Cops and Docs
PowerPoint and interactive presentation aimed at eighth-grade students. The
program intends to reach out to kids before they enter high school in an effort
to encourage them to make positive choices and put an end to the cycle of
violence that has been plaguing many school systems.
“It seems that over the past few years there have been more
incidents of guns and violent episodes in schools,” explained Kathy Schmidt,
manager of volunteer and community services at St. Francis Hospital. “This
program was done in Seattle and we took a look at it and decided to partner with
Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility to bring the program to our
area. We have seven middle schools and we see each of those schools each
year—that’s 1,200 to 1,500 kids each year—and it’s been very successful.”
To implement the Cops and Docs program, a physician or
nurse pairs with a police officer to present several youth-related crime
scenarios, such as a youngster getting shot on a playground by another youth
with a gun in his backpack, a gang-related shooting or a teen committing suicide
with a parent’s gun. While the police officer explains the legal consequences of
such scenarios, medical professionals show real photographs of shooting victims
and demonstrate medical props, such as a colostomy bag or a catheter, which
would be used to treat someone who had been shot.
“We talk about what it means when you have to go into an
operating room, have a trauma surgeon work on you and possibly have longstanding
injuries,” explained Mark Blaney, RN, an emergency nurse at St. Francis Hospital
and a Cops and Docs presenter in the Federal Way schools.
Blaney holds up chest tubes and other props and explains,
often graphically, their uses in an attempt to enforce the reality of the
situations.
“When Mark is there with the chest tube showing how it goes
in, or when the physician is there talking about what he does with a catheter,
the kids don’t want that to happen to them,” Schmidt explained.
“You don’t see that on TV, where there’s a guy with a gunshot
wound and he may be lying in bed, but he looks good. The photo we have of a boy
with a gauze-filled incision from his chest to his pubic bone because he’s too
bloated—this kid doesn’t look so good,” she added.
“I really am pretty graphic,” Blaney said. “But that really
gets their attention and shows that this is real—it isn’t a video game.”
For anyone who may think the program is too graphic for kids
of such a young age, Schmidt and Blaney explained that parents, PTA, school
administration and faculty all support the program and recognize the need for
it.
“Being a parent myself, you’re not glad to have to bring this
into the schools, but if you can teach kids to go to a counselor and report that
someone they know has a gun, you can save the school, a friend, a parent or a
teacher,” Schmidt said. “Unfortunately, we read and see news about school
shootings too often. Parents were for it and from there, the principals went for
it.”
Since the program’s inception, the group has been asked to
tailor a program for high school students, as well as a less-graphic program
intended for younger students. For now, however, they are staying the course in
middle schools and continuing to enforce their two important messages: “Silence
Kills,” which encourages kids to tell someone if they know someone who intends
to commit a violent act; and “Every Gun is Always Loaded,” which enforces the
fact that you never know when a gun is loaded, so you should always treat it as
if it is. As part of the program, presenters also hand out resource brochures
with numbers to call if students need help, including an anonymous tip line to
report people they know have weapons.
While the presenters do not have statistical data on the
effects of Cops and Docs, they attest to the success and the importance
of continuing the program.
“There has been an increase in reporting of weapons in the
Federal Way school district,” Schmidt said. “We worried that meant we’re doing a
bad job, but we’re hoping it means we’re doing a good job in that more kids are
reporting that something might happen.”
Blaney concurred.
“I got involved because I wanted the challenge of teaching in
a different setting and getting involved with the community. I knew it would be
an opportunity to do something very effective, and it has been,” he said. “The
one thing we talk about in whether you’ve seen a huge change in violence is that
sometimes you have to look at what you’ve prevented. If you’ve prevented one
act, it makes it worthwhile.”
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