In gunshot suicide death is from blood loss. Apparently he didn't lose enough blood to die.
Not actually true most the time, the majority of the time it's from destruction of brain tissue and depending where they hit in the brain, it ceases automatic bodily functions such as breathing, etc. There are many cases where people live for 12 hours to 2 weeks but are virtually brain dead and just being kept alive by machines in the ICU. Small caliber weapons generally don't cause much bleeding tbh, definitely not enough to bleed to death. The bloody pictures you see are typically from high powered rifles or shotguns which you still can live from (if you get lucky, or unlucky maybe it really is) and they don't die from the blood loss, they die virtually instantly from complete destruction of their brain stem (assuming they don't miss and blow half their face off). The only way you die from blood loss is you miss or aim wrong with large caliber ammo or a shotgun and basically blow part of your face off leaving the brain and airway intact so you can still breathe and then you would bleed to death, yes, but that's not as common as you would think. I saw 2-3 cases in the ER where this happened and they lived but with major disfigurement.
EDIT: I am referring to GSW to the head btw, not chest or other areas as they are typically not used for suicide and are very uncommon to see when looking at statistics but in that case I suppose you would likely die from blood loss but nobody is shooting their stomach or arm or leg for suicide.
thank you im sorry you go through so much in your career and im glad you love your career path and you have a husband and kid.
do you have any advice for me as someone wanting to be a social worker?
Really look into it, maybe find one locally that will let you ask questions just because it varies so much country to country and even states to states. Realize you will always be very very underappreciated, possibly be assaulted for quite literally just doing your job depending where and who you work with. In crisis or the ER there are many of us that we're physically assaulted multiple times. And verbally assaulted basically every shift. You get used to that. I just brush it off now and don't really care when a guy calls me a stupid bitch etc. Seems to me that you probably shouldn't be calling the lady that has the power to section you a stupid cunt....but we can't all be so smart. Overall I love my career and I wouldn't change it for the world but I do wish I had known these things going in and that I will always be underpaid for the amount of education were required to get. I have 2 years education less than medical school yet don't make half what a GP makes.