What Is Forensic Nursing
If you want a short explanation, think CSI.
Forensic Nursing involves working with law enforcement officials to assist in the investigation of crimes such as abuse, assault and accidental death. Forensic Nursing is one of the newest specialty areas recognized by the American Nurses Association.
Some of the work will require the nurse to collect evidence from the victim and the suspect so a case can be can be made and justice can be served.
Since crimes happen daily (everywhere in the world), there’s a big requirement for forensic nursing. Just to give you an idea, there are:
- Correctional Nursing Specialist
- Forensic Clinical Nurse Specialist
- Forensic Gerontology Specialist
- Forensic Nurse Investigator
- Forensic Psychiatric Nurse
- Legal Nurse Consultant
- Nurse Coroner/Death Investigator
- Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner
From the above, the 3 largest sub-specialty of forensic nursing is sexual assault, death investigation and forensic psychiatric nursing.
Briefly, this is what you will do based from the 3 above.
When rape (or sexual abuse) occurs, the forensic nurse responsibility is to collect evidence, DNA samples, from the victim. If the victim knows the attacker, a DNA sample can be collected from the suspect. If not the DNA sample collected are cross referenced into the criminal database. Any match would lead to arrest.
In terms of death investigation, the forensic nurse assists the pathologist in determining the cause of death of a victim.
Forensic psychiatric nursing is all about giving a suspect a psychiatric evaluation. This is to determine whether the suspect is fit for trial or not. Or if his a convict, this process will be used to ascertain his parole approval.
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[...] nursing is also useful in other fields, other than the one briefly described in the ‘What Is Forensic Nursing‘ post. These include tissue and organ donation, pediatrics and in a correctional [...]