Thursday, October 16, 2008

A Huge Leap Forward

Much stress around the office.  Lots of outreach/community education with the start of the school year.  Still waiting for a grantor to honor their contract with us.  

But, still a tad bit "work high" from a new development this week.  Years ago, I attended a wonderful workshop at the national conference about a new program to train nurses to gather forensic evidence in sexual violence cases . . . document it . . . and teach them to testify.  It was hugely successful in the communities where it was going on.  

I immediately met with the director of our Emergency Department about this cool new idea.  I had grand plans . . . a room equipped with everything we would need to perform truly excellent forensic examinations, nurses trained and available.  It was going to be cool.  Except that the hospital had plans for expanding and renovating the ED and a forensic examination room wasn't in their plans.

That was years ago.  Since then, I've tried to convince individual nurses to take the training.  But, even the few who did were frustrated by the hospital's lack of cooperation and found higher paying jobs elsewhere.

Until this week.  This week, we had a certified forensic nurse examiner perform an evidence kit . . . and she had a nurse in training with her.  I learned that there are 7 nurses in our ED who have taken the 50 hours of classroom training and are working through their 50 hours of clinicals.  The trainee nurse told me that she is hoping that in a year's time . . . they will have all kits performed by a forensic nurse examiner and possibly our exam room set up.

For those of you not aware of the forensic nurse examiner program . . . the program is open to nurses with several years of ED or women's health nursing experience.  There is extensive classroom training for everything from evidence preservation to being cross examined.  

Most clients won't necessarily realize the difference . . . except that the forensic nurses work harder to build a relationship with the victim . . . to make the evidence gathering process as much of a joint venture as possible.  And, I noticed that the nurse was a lot more patient with examining for internal trauma when usually doctors only notice it if there is blood or it is unmistakable.  

It took years and much patience, but oh my goodness is this a huge leap forward for us.

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