Kits from Regional One help gunshot victims care for themselves at home

Regional One Health’s Elvis Presley Trauma Center, one of the nation’s busiest trauma centers,

has started providing special kits to patients with bullet-related injuries while also exploring the

possibility of bringing a community-based clinic to Memphis to serve those patients.

The kit, called The BRIC Box, provides the supplies most patients will need to care for their

wounds at home during the first 48 hours after they’ve been discharged from the emergency

department.

Many patients lack health insurance coverage and are not connected to the health care system.

They also lack the supplies needed to care for themselves after they’re discharged, such as sterile

gauze pads, antibiotic ointment, antiseptic wipes and medical tape.

Dr. Yasmin Ali, a trauma surgeon at Regional One Health’s Elvis Presley Trauma Center,

said the kits are the first step in addressing the needs of people with bullet-related injuries

beyond the walls of the trauma center.

“A lot of times, the patients don’t get any wound-care supplies, and this is a way to provide

patients with some of the resources to help take care of their injuries when they leave the

hospital,” said Ali, who’s also an assistant professor of trauma/surgical critical care at the

University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine.

The kits provide not only the supplies, but also written discharge instructions and answers to

patients' most frequently asked questions, which makes them more likely to comply with care at

home.

“We try to give them good instructions, but sometimes it’s a little bit difficult when they don’t

have the actual materials in front of them with instructions written out like they do in the boxes,”

Ali said.

The Elvis Presley Trauma Center is starting with 50 BRIC Boxes to distribute to patients who

are treated at the trauma center for bullet-related injuries but not admitted to the hospital.

The BRIC Box comes from The Bullet Related Injury Clinic, better known as The BRIC, in St.

Louis, Missouri. The community-based clinic helps people heal after they have been injured by a

bullet.

At The BRIC, professionals and volunteers provide accessible, trauma-informed, culturally

competent care to support those who are recovering from both the physical pain and the

emotional trauma of bullet-related injuries.

The clinic’s holistic approach includes traditional and non-traditional clinic staff, including s a

nurse practitioner, a therapist, a naturopathic doctor and a director of social and spiritual care.

Care at The BRIC is free and accessible for patients. No insurance is required and there are no

prohibitive piles of paperwork to complete. It’s a place of hope, where kindness is shown and

trust is cultivated.

“It’s non-traditional health care, something that you don’t charge for,” said Josh Dugal, director

of trauma services at Elvis Presley Trauma Center. “It’s radically different medicine.”

Dr. LJ Punch, a former trauma surgeon, founded The BRIC in 2020 to meet the unmet needs of

people in St. Louis who are discharged from the emergency department after being shot.

Dugal, a trauma nurse who spent his career in St. Louis, before relocating to Memphis to join

Regional One in 2023, served on the community advisory board that created The BRIC in St.

Louis.

He invited Punch to Memphis in late March to speak at the Elvis Presley Trauma Center’s two-

day conference, held at the Guesthouse at Graceland. Punch introduced local trauma care

professionals to The BRIC model during his presentation, called “Bullets Go Deep.”

“Memphis is close to St. Louis, and it’s a very similar city with similar challenges,” Punch said.

As Punch told the Memphis audience during his presentation, he prefers the term bullet-related

injury to gunshot wound.

“Gun violence is a very specific conversation that’s important, I think, to the world of social

science, and maybe public health,” he said. “But as a physician who’s caring for people whose

bodies have been impaled by bullets, worrying about the implement or the circumstances of

their injury doesn’t get me very far in caring for their bodies.

It also keeps the conversation at the level of political discourse and argument, and not at the

level of physiology, not at the level of medicine.”

Punch has provided mentorship and insights to Dugal, Ali and other team members at the Elvis

Presley Trauma Center so they can learn from the success of The BRIC.

“We’ve gotten really good at seeing that critically ill patient, taking care of them, getting them

through their hospital stay and getting them out of the hospital,” Ali said. “We have not put as

much focus and time and care into what happens to them after they leave the hospital.”

The trauma team is exploring the possibility of replicating The BRIC’s community care model

for patients with bullet-related injuries in Memphis.

“We were introduced to the concept of having a clinic that supports patients with bullet-related

injuries, and we want to explore that to see if it’s something we can do,” Dugal said. “The boxes

are the first step towards really gaining people’s trust, then doing all the things we need to do in

the future to make them healthier.”