Plastic Surgeons, Fearing Violence, Turn to Psychiatry to Screen Patients

The operation went off without a hitch. Another successful nose job — or so Dr. Ira Papel thought. Until the patient came back to his clinic threatening to shoot himself and others.
The police eventually defused the situation (and the troubled patient wasn’t armed). But the episode continues to weigh heavily on Papel.
“When you have a guy in your waiting room with a trench coat, his hands in his pockets, saying he has some guns — that’s pretty traumatic,” said Papel, medical director of the Facial Plastic Surgicenter of Baltimore, adding: “And all because he said his nose was not quite what he wanted.”
Read more at Stat.