The Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) is considering implementing a policy that would see Emergency Room staff, including emergency medical technicians (EMTs), question gunshot victims.It may not appear to be the sensitive thing to do, but victims should be questioned about the incident in addition to getting medical treatment, according to William Smock.Dr Smock, a clinical forensic physician with the Louisville, Kentucky Police Department, spoke with Body & Soul earlier this year.He then said it was important for both police and emergency medical staff to ask victims to recall what happened as soon as possible.According to Dr Smock, EMTs, as well as attending doctors and nurses in the Emergency Department, should ask victims certain questions as a matter of procedure.Such questions could include how close the victim was to the gun and if they saw the shooter, he said.“It’s important to document this because you can really tie the hands of the police if it is not documented,” he said.In Bermuda, police do not ride in the ambulance with victims unless they were in police custody when shot.And local EMTs do not question gunshot victims about their shooting.At a public talk given during Emergency Medical Services Week in May, EMTs said their questions to victims are confined to medical ones.“We will ask if they are on any medications,” said EMT Charles Maynard.Questioning the victim on things like range of fire and the identity of the culprit are matters for local police, the EMTs said.They felt that such questioning by them would be tantamount to interfering in a criminal investigation. But according to Dr Smock, restricting the line of questioning to solely medical matters stymies social justice.“In my mind, in the case of any victim of gun violence you [the medical team treating the victim] want to know what happened to them,” he said.But even in cases where the victim appears to be near death, local EMTs said they do not try to garner anything other than medical information.“I don’t think they are treating the whole victim, the whole patient,” said Dr Smock. “If I were a victim of gun violence it would be important to me that the police have all the information related my assault so they could prosecute whoever is responsible. Without that information someone might say it was self-defense of something else.”Dr Smock said the information could become even more important in cases where the person dies.“What we have found is that the forensics complements the treatment and we can do both without compromising patient care. In my opinion patient care is enhanced because we are gathering more information,” he said.“It’s that holistic approach to the patient not only do we treat them to save their life, but we also get the history. Which physician doesn’t want history? We are just going that extra step to get the forensic history to help get social justice.”Talking about the incident might actually help the mental state of the victim “to know that everything is being done to help to try to catch the person”, Dr Smock added.In cases where the victim may have a self-inflicted injury, Dr Smock said such questioning by medical staff could save police time and money.“They don’t have to go out looking for a suspect or arresting the wrong person because you said I shot you when actually you shot yourself,” he said.It’s an argument EMTs were not willing to discuss at the public lecture, but a spokeperson for the Bermuda Hospitals Board (BHB) this week said: “While BHB does allow members of the Bermuda Police Service to interview victims, dependent on their condition, we do not have a formal interview process in place at this time for our Emergency Department staff members.“Discussions are being undertaken to address this issue with careful consideration given to balancing the importance of patient confidentiality with the need to obtain forensic information.”