

Clinician Resources
If you are here, it's probably because you care for people who have been shot or threatened, or have even lost a loved one to a bullet.
Clinician Resources: Click to view resources (available in PDF)
Four Guiding Principles
To achieve the goal of unbreaking broken trust, The BRIC approaches care for BRI with the following Four Guiding Principles:
1 - Radical Generosity
This intentional work to provide patients with what they need to care for their bodies without having to first justify their need, innocence, worth, or financial capacity, is an essential first step in providing BRICare. This includes the provision of BRIC Boxes as the introduction to BRIC Medicine, free of charge, at the time of discharge from the ED or the hospital. This box represents a gift to the patient to gain capacity to care for themselves and meet their essential needs as they are transferring from care within a conventional setting to their homes where they may have little assistance in managing their wounds and pain.
2 - Accessibility
This commitment includes making services, whatever they may be, as accessible to those in need as possible. This includes eliminating barriers related to communication and transportation, providing instructions and materials that are culturally congruent, and assuring the directions provided are, in fact, able to be carried out by each patient based on their level of understanding and capacity.
3 - Co-Located:
The BRIC attempts to provide each needed component of care in one location. Thus the introduction of The BRIC Box includes not only pain management strategies or wound care supplies, but the invitation to reflective grounding practices that can begin to address the trauma of BRI. By presenting a holistic approach to care, which includes what we term “heart, mind, body, and soul” medicine in one act, we communicate to the person the value we place in them once again becoming whole. While this is best communicated through an in person community based setting, this process can begin through the provision of a BRIC Box, and the invitation to engage with virtual resources provided with the box.
4 - Self-Care Directed:
Self-care truly is the best care. When a patient is discharged, it is because they have come to a point where they no longer require care within a conventional healthcare setting. By definition, therefore, they must have the capacity to care for themselves. This means adapting instructions, materials, guidance, and planning to allow patients and families the best opportunity to achieve the care on their own, rather than relying on prescriptive practices or complex directions which are unable to be realized by the self. This transition of power through self-agency in which individuals have the ability to do what they need to be well can serve as a foundation for the healing of broken self-trust and the return of self-reliance that is essential to healing BRI.
Taken together, these approaches transform the process for even the most simple of bedside conversations, discharge instructions, and aftercare planning. They can make the difference between patients leaving the hospital disoriented and disempowered, to them having the hope that they have the tools and knowledge to know how to heal after BRI. We welcome you to the collective knowledge of BRIC Medicine in both theory and praxis so that you may better support those you care for as they recover from the deep impact of a bullet.

Bullet Related Injury (BRI) is defined as the physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual impact a bullet has in someone’s life, through direct and indirect injury. This includes those who are physically injured as well as those who are threatened. This also includes the shared experience of BRI when a loved one is injured or lost. Of all the ways that bullets impact bodies and lives, the deepest trauma comes from the way they break trust: trust that our bodies, homes, and communities are safe places for us to exist. When we have BRI, our broken trust makes it impossible to interact with even the most well intended care. Thus, the core mission of the care for BRI must be a commitment to UNBREAKING BROKEN TRUST. By approaching this break in trust with universal precautions that assure it is not further injured through our words and behaviors, we can begin to help people heal from BRI in a safe, affirming environment.
We divide this experience into three categories: Body, Threat, and Loss.
When someone has Loss BRI, they have lost a loved one to a bullet. This can occur within relationships, families and social work, but can also impact vast communities when leaders and public figures die from the direct impact of a bullet. This kind of BRI is the most often undefined and untreated, as there are few therapeutic resources focused on the loved ones who remain behind after someone dies in an Emergency Department or Operating Room. Patients with Loss BRI can also manifest every component of the trauma of BRI without having any physical wounds to heal.
When someone has Body BRI, they have a physical injury from the direct impact of a bullet. This comes with a visible wound that needs to heal, as well as the whole person's impact of BRI. If a loved one has Body BRI, this is an indirect expression of this injury.
When someone has Threat BRI, they have been threatened by a bullet, such as in a school shooting or domestic disturbance. In this case, they have no physical wound at all, but can manifest every other expression of BRI. They may also have an injury that was related to events surrounding the threat of a bullet, but that were not the direct impact of a bullet, such as running away at the scene of a mass shooting. It is important to have language to describe the multiple ways the threat of a bullet can be experienced, and the consistent manifestation of broken trust and deep trauma that results. This can again be a direct effect, or indirect experience, for instance when a parent is caring for a child who went through a school shooting.
In each case, the bullet’s power to move through the air and threaten, hurt, and destroy life is the foundation of how bullets break trust.

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Healing Resources: Click to view resources (available in PDF and Video)
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