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Active Shooters in Health Care Settings: Prevention and Response through Law and Policy

Public Health and the Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

James G. Hodge Jr.  and
Kellie Nelson
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Extract

In September 2010 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the nation's elite academic hospitals located in East Baltimore, Maryland, Paul Warren Pardus entered the facility to visit his mother, a patient. During a discussion with her doctor in a hospital hallway, Pardus became “overwhelmed” about the care and condition of his mother, pulled a handgun from his waistband, and shot the doctor in the chest. Pardus then locked himself and his mother in her room, shot and killed her, and committed suicide.

Dr. Gabe Kelen, a national expert on emergency preparedness and director of the Johns Hopkins emergency department, admitted several years later that this tragic event “really got us thinking in a very serious way.” Together with colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR), Kelen conducted research on the threat and impact of “active shooters” in health care settings.

Type
JLME Column
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , Summer 2014 , pp. 268 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2014

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