By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Last week, the unthinkable happened. A grandmother was grocery shopping in the middle of the day in a suburban grocery store in South Florida with her one-year-old grandson. Seemingly out of nowhere, a troubled man with a history of schizophrenia walked up to their shopping cart as the grandmother turned to take an item off the shelf and shot the infant. The grandmother immediately took action and tried to do a takedown of the gunman. She was almost successful in her efforts, but the gunman overpowered her and shot and killed her as well.
It was a random act of gun violence that has deeply shaken the community. Like many others, I heard the story reported and shook my head in horror. Later that day, I learned that the grandmother was a friend of almost four decades – Litha Varone, a retired VA Chief Nursing Officer. The sheriff’s department described her as a hero because she fought back. That did not surprise me. With decades of Crisis Prevention Training and Takedowns as part of our nursing mandatory reviews in the VA, the reaction was probably instinctual. Litha was a nurse’s nurse. Taking action in a crisis is what we do.
Gun violence has become such a backdrop in our society that it is easy to ignore the latest news reports. What made this story so different for people is that it was not a domestic violence case or a drug deal gone bad. What happened to Litha could have happened to any of us. It is something that nurses who work in emergency departments and trauma units see day in and day out. Gun violence coupled with a broken mental health system are problems that nurses have described as a public health epidemic in the ENA documentary In Case of Emergency.
The world has lost a great nurse leader, and I have lost a friend. Gun violence carries a steep price – a lesson I have personally learned like many others in our country.
© emergingrnleader.com 2021
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