By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Picture this: “Mimi,” an 18-year-old Brazilian girl who speaks little English, arrives in your ED with injuries sustained in a beating. She’s accompanied by an older man who refuses to leave her side and who intercepts and answers questions directed at Mimi. The ED physicians and nurses treat Mimi’s injuries and release her back to this man’s care. Maybe you feel uneasy, but what can you do? Maybe the man really is her uncle; maybe he’s just being overprotective.

In fact, Mimi is a victim of human trafficking, and the man who brought her to the hospital is both her pimp and her trafficker. And you and your colleagues just missed a chance to intervene on her behalf. Unfortunately, you’re not alone. In “The Role of the Nurse in Combating Human Trafficking,” a February CE feature, author Donna Sabella notes that clinicians who encounter victims of human trafficking often don’t realize it, and many such chances to intervene are lost. Sabella, a nursing professor active in helping such victims, hopes to change this. […]