Gun violence prompts emergency nurse to train others

Hershaw Davis has spent his whole life in Baltimore, and he says too many don’t understand the city.

Like other big cities, Baltimore deals with gun violence, although the number of people wounded by firearms has dropped this year, according to CBS Baltimore.

But Baltimore residents look out for each other and that’s why some have never left the city.

“The people of Baltimore are why people stay,” Davis said. “The people are actually very good people. It's a blue-collar town …. it has those blue-collar roots, regardless of your ethnic background. At its heart, we were always taught to take care of one another.”

Davis has taken that to heart. He has worked as an emergency nurse at Johns Hopkins for 16 years. He now works part-time, and the bulk of his time is spent training aspiring nurses at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. He’s also the chairman of the Emergency Nurses Association’s DEI Committee.

In his time in the emergency department, Davis has seen many victims of gun violence.

“That's a given, being that it's Baltimore, or any big city for that matter,” Davis said. “There is no lack of violence.”

• Read more: The toll of gun violence, through the eyes of nurses

Davis said he has had friends and relatives who have succumbed to violence. And when he has seen victims of gun violence come into the emergency department, Davis said he’s always conscious of the fact that the individual is more than just a statistic.

“I decided to go teach, to train the next generation of nurses, hopefully to impart the lessons I've learned and am learning, and also the humanitarian aspect of what we do,” Davis said. “To realize a patient is not a body or a number, but a person with a story.”

“Sometimes when you read the story, or hear the story, it paints a different picture,” he adds. “And you realize, if you really step back, through some different choices of either yourself, or your parents, or grandparents, that could have been you. So I think that's what people have to remember.”

Davis also tries to guide nursing students to view victims of gun violence with humanity and empathy.

He recalls learning lessons early in his nursing career in the emergency department. He said the supervising nurse directed him to talk to the family of a man who was shot several times and had died. The victim’s fiancee was several months pregnant, and Davis said the charge nurse explained why he had to sit and spend time with the family.

“You always have to remember regardless of what he did in life, that is somebody's son, somebody's daughter, brother, sister, spouse,” Davis said. “So there's a humanitarian part to what we do. And sometimes people get clouded up in biases and subjectivity, to people being victims of violence, and make assumptions.”

“When you hear a mother or a father cry over their child's dead body, and I've heard it a lot, you will never forget that cry in your life. And it helps center you,” he said.

• Read more: For an emergency nurse, treating victims of gun violence doesn’t get easier

Davis explained that empathy and humanity are essential elements of nursing.

“There's a humanitarian aspect of the providers,” Davis said. “And nursing is both a science, but it is also an art. In the art of nursing, is the people part. The people part is really the art.”

For nursing students seeing the emergency department for the first time, it’s an eye-opening experience, he said. After dealing with a victim of gun violence or other trauma, Davis will talk with them about what they see.

“It's a lot different than what you see on TV, the smells, the sounds, or what it's like to see somebody either on the brink of death or actually succumb to it. And a lot of them are like, ‘Wow.’ And then we talk,” Davis said.

Davis doesn’t downplay Baltimore’s challenges, acknowledging the city is plagued by violence. But he also wants to help heal the city he loves.

“I've always taken pride in being from Baltimore,” Davis said. “We have pride in the city. People don't often understand why, but there’s unique things that are unique to Baltimore.”

As Davis said, “You can either be an outsider or try to change the system from within.”

• Read more: Treating children wounded by gun violence: ‘They always scar’