God And The Devil In The Operating Room: The Horrors That Trauma Surgeons Confront Every Day

This is one of those necessary stories that force us to think out of the box.

When someone brings up the gun debate in the US, we tend to think about mass shootings in high schools or children who accidentally shoot a gun and get hurt or die.

"The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront every day."

Dr. Amy Goldberg is a trauma surgeon with 30 years of experience, most of them working at Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia, which treats more gunshot victims than any other in the state.

"More than 30,000 people die of gunshot wounds each year in America, around 75,000 more are injured, and we have no visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot."

Goldberg believes that if people saw pictures of the autopsies of gunshot victims, the debate would change.

We think that when someone gets shot the main problem is the bullet. We see it in the movies. The hero gets shot, removes the bullet with whatever he can find, puts on a bandage and he can continue his journey. But what about the damage the bullet causes to the muscles, the organs, the bones?

In serious cases, surgeons have to crack the patient's chest in the trauma area. Sometimes even break the sternum. The tools they use... more like Saw and less like Grey's Anatomy.

Those who survive – 80% do – often pay the price: carrying colostomy bags for the rest of their lives, being paralyzed or losing limbs entirely.

Since 2005 Goldberg and her team have developed some ambitious programs at preventing violence. Some of them very controversial, including patients watching a video of their own trauma-bay resuscitation.