University of California San Francisco

Trauma Surgeon Andre Campbell, M.D. Vents Frustration over Toll of Pervasive Daily Gun Violence in Nation’s ERs

UCSF Department of Surgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General
June 29, 2018

UCSF trauma surgeon Andre Campbell, M.D., who was on the trauma team that treated victims injured in the shooting at the YouTube headquarters in California, vented his frustration over decades of gun violence in a press conference about the shooting.  As reported by CNN, Campbell challenged the news media to look beyond the sensational events and address the pervasive omnipresent gun violence that is a daily occurrence in the U.S. Campbell was widely praised in social media for stance as well as his decades of service as a trauma surgeon and mentorship to many generations of medical students and surgical residents at UCSF. 

"To think that after we've seen Las Vegas, Parkland, the Pulse nightclub shooting, that we would see an end to this, but we have not," Campbell, an attending trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, told reporters.

"Gun violence happens every day throughout the United States. It happens here in San Francisco. It happens in the Bay Area. It happens all over the country," Campbell said. "But I don't see you guys out here because I'd like to make sure that people know that we got a serious problem that we need to address." 
"I don't have all the answers ... at least we're having a discussion about it nationally," he said. "This is a real problem."
"This is a terrible day in the United States," said Campbell, a professor of surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine."I didn't see all these cameras out here ... last week when I was here," he said. 

"That's the problem, when something like this happens, which is terribly unfortunate, then you guys come out," Campbell said. "The reality is we have to deal with this all the time. We have to deal with the families."

"We kind of quietly do our job and we don't say a whole lot," he said. "But today just seemed like it was a day where people wanted to hear what was going on."

 "We as trauma providers, we are just saddened by the fact that this is a persistent problem. "It happens with such regularity. It's unbelievable," he said of gun violence. 

"We need to work together to find a solution," Campbell said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to KQED Interview with Dr. Andre Campbell

Tags:
Preventing Gun Violence
ZSFG Trauma Response