40-years of Forensic Nursing and Current Opportunities in Remote Sexual Assault Care

Remembering an influential article.

Patricia Speck

Timing is everything. Forensic nursing service through telehealth is possible today, as reported in a recent Kaiser Health News story, but it wasn’t always that way. Fifty years ago, Ann W. Burgess, a psychiatric–mental health nurse working in the emergency room, wrote a paper with a sociologist colleague about what she was seeing in patients who complained of being raped. “The Rape Victim in the Emergency Ward” (pdf), published in AJN, was reported nationally and informed 1970s kitchen table conversations about what rape is, is not, and when “no means no.”

Naming the trauma and its effects.

The ideas in this article were new at the time. Burgess wrote that sexual assault causes acute emotional trauma, requiring time for recovery, and she named phases of what she eventually called “rape trauma syndrome.” Prior to the article, victims of sexual assault often did not report the assault, and when they did they waited hours for a newly minted physician intern who had been punished with “rape-duty.” These physicians had no knowledge about what to do.

In accordance with societal views at the time, victims were often blamed for their rape—the way you dress, how you act, if […]

2023-02-17T10:40:20-05:00February 17th, 2023|digital health, nursing roles, patient experience, Public health|2 Comments
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Caring for Caregivers—We Need More Than Self-Care and Resilience

Mural painted by critical care unit staff to honor patients who contracted COVID-19. The stars represent those who succumbed to the illness and the flowers those who were discharged from the hospital. Mural by the MedStar Montgomery ICU Team; photo by Cherri Walrath.

Self-care is not a panacea.

Since the start of the pandemic, AJN has received many manuscripts and queries related to self-care and resilience to prevent burnout. It’s not surprising, given that this has been a harrowing year for nurses.

But while self-care and resilience are important, and such articles are needed, all the self-care in the world can’t fully address the root of the problem—the systemic issues that lead to burnout. At some point health care administration needs to step in and become part of the solution and offer staff the help they need.

A CE feature in our May issue, “Providing Care for Caregivers During COVID-19,” highlights one hospital system’s efforts to do just that. The Care for the Caregiver program, which existed prior to the pandemic, was created to support ‘second victims,’ defined by the Center for Patient Safety as “healthcare providers who are involved in an unanticipated adverse patient event, medical error and/or a patient related injury and become victimized in the sense that the provider is traumatized […]

2021-05-27T09:19:17-04:00May 27th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Addressing Clinician Mental Health and Suicide Risk During the Pandemic

Pandemics are known to cause panic disorder, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and posttraumatic stress. Depression can lead to suicide if not treated, yet is a treatable disease. We have seen nurses die by suicide during this pandemic in Italy.

Past experience suggests that health care workers exposed to the stress of the pandemic will need help long after the pandemic is under control.

I am serving as co-chair of the Strength Through Resilience task force of the American Nurses Association, whose focus was originally to collate resources to reduce suicide among nurses. We quickly shifted gears when the pandemic hit to collate resources to optimize resiliency and mental health among nurses in relation to the projected impact of the pandemic. Curiously, these resources are virtually identical. The ANA has posted initial resources as part of their Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation campaign and is and building more resources as quickly as possible.

Nurses already at higher suicide risk.

The added stress of the pandemic is particularly problematic because of evidence that emerged before the pandemic that nurses were at higher risk of suicide than the general public. If leaders at health care organizations have not already started proactively screening staff […]

2020-05-12T16:27:31-04:00May 12th, 2020|COVID-19, mental illness, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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Addressing Health Care Worker Trauma with an Off-Site, Overnight Workshop

Everyone experiences loss and other personal trauma, but those of us who work in health care are obliged to cope with our own personal grief and stress as well as witness the suffering and pain of our patients. Do these words ever describe you at the end of a shift at work?

” . . . angry . . . anxious . . . hopeless . . . stressed . . . depleted . . . depressed . . . frazzled . . . “

One health system gets serious.

There’s a lot of talk these days about addressing clinicians’ burnout, and in some workplaces staff now are offered a meditation room, or aromatherapy or massage.

But since 2013, Montefiore Health System in Bronx, New York, has seriously invested in their staff’s mental and emotional health by offering a two-day, off-site experiential and educational workshop twice a year. And by paying for the program, retreat center, and meals for all participants so that staff can attend for free.

In “Helping Care Providers and Staff Process Grief Through a Hospital-Based Program” in the July issue of AJN, Ronit Fallek and colleagues share their experiences in developing this program along with their analysis of feedback about its effectiveness. They offer enough detail to confirm […]

2019-07-25T11:18:15-04:00July 25th, 2019|Nursing, nursing career, wellness|0 Comments
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Emotional and Physical Health Consequences for Children of Jailed Parents

Michael Coghlan/Flickr

In the United States, more than half (54%) of all prison inmates are parents with minor children. As we discuss in the December AJN Reports, those children—an estimated 2.7 million, or one in 28—face physical and emotional health challenges that often go overlooked, including:

  • obesity, asthma, migraines, and hypertension
  • depression, anxiety, PTSD, and problems at school, including a higher likelihood of being expelled or suspended

Additionally, children with incarcerated parents are at an economic disadvantage due to lowered family income caused by the parent’s absence, and are more likely to experience racial discrimination, parental divorce or separation, a parent’s death, domestic abuse, neighborhood violence, and coresidence with a mentally ill or suicidal person or with a person who has a substance abuse problem. […]

2017-12-15T08:29:46-05:00December 15th, 2017|Patients|2 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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