From Taboo to Accepted: Increasing Gun Safety Counseling in Pediatric Primary Care

Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among the pediatric population. Previous studies have shown that proper safe storage of firearms can reduce pediatric firearm injuries. Effective interventions, such as pediatric primary care health care providers (HCPs) doing firearm injury prevention (FIP) counseling while giving anticipatory guidance during a well child check, combined with providing a gun lock, can have a strong impact on decreasing the number of firearm injuries. The evidence-based practice project will use an existing evidence-based bundle approach to train HCPs from primary care clinics within a large pediatric health care organization to consistently offer FIP counseling during well child checks (WCC). A pre-intervention survey distributed to HCPs will be used for baseline measurements, with a bundled educational intervention, handout resources for providers and families, and provision of a gun lock, and post-intervention survey 4 weeks later to assess for anticipated increased confidence, self-efficacy, and frequency in providing FIP counseling. Based on the findings of the project, recommendations will be determined for ongoing FIP training for HCPs.