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, […]

2023-02-17T10:40:20-05:00February 17th, 2023|digital health, nursing roles, patient experience, Public health|2 Comments
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Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids: A Panacea?

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the sale of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids for people with mild to moderate hearing loss (not severe hearing loss), beginning Oct. 17, 2022. What should nurses know about these devices?

Margaret Wallhagen

Hearing loss is one of the most common chronic conditions, becomes increasingly prevalent across the life span, and is far from benign. This latter fact is often not appreciated, but hearing loss is associated with a range of negative psychosocial concerns such as isolation and depression, as well as many health-related conditions, including falls, delirium, and cognitive decline.

For a long time, I’ve been passionate about raising awareness about hearing loss and its impact on people, their families, society, and the health care they receive, as well as promoting hearing health care access. One intervention that can mitigate some of the impact of hearing loss is the use of hearing aids. The focus of this brief blog post is on a new opportunity for people to access this technology that those of us in health care should be aware of.

Cost as a barrier to use of hearing aids.

Prescription hearing aids, while far from perfect, can help, and usually do make hearing […]

2022-12-05T17:33:55-05:00December 5th, 2022|health care policy, Nursing, Patients, Public health, Technology|2 Comments
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Assessing the Post-Pandemic Future of Virtual Care

The following is a condensed version of an upcoming news article by Joan Zolot scheduled for AJN’s May edition.

Studies of safety and quality will determine the optimum use of this option.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

The use of telemedicine surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phone and videoconferencing limited patients’ exposure to the virus while maintaining their access to care. One estimate found that virtual care peaked at 42% of all ambulatory visits covered by commercial insurers in April 2020. The February 2 JAMA published several articles* addressing the safety, effectiveness, and quality of virtual consults and their future in health care.

Some obvious and potential benefits.

Because of its efficiency, virtual care has been shown to be particularly suitable for mental health consults, prescription refills, and straightforward evaluations. It can reduce patient inconveniences such as travel to appointments and lost work time. It can also enable patients to receive needed care sooner, especially those with limited mobility, caregiving responsibilities, or who live in remote areas. It may also have the potential to improve care coordination by enabling primary care clinicians and specialists to confer jointly with patients.

Risks, concerns, ongoing questions.

Because virtual medicine does not allow for physical examination, it’s inadequate for common clinical situations […]

2021-04-07T14:15:14-04:00April 7th, 2021|digital health, patient engagement, Patients, Public health, Technology|0 Comments
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COVID-19: On and On

A note from AJN’s editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy.

Published: March 30. As I write this, the United States has over 140,000 COVID-19 cases and over 2,400 deaths, and we’re told those numbers have yet to peak. The US Navy hospital ship Comfort is on it’s way to New York City, bringing its 1,000 beds to be used as a supplemental hospital. Its sister ship Mercy is on its way to Los Angeles. Bedside nurses and CNOs alike talk about the “war zone” that their hospitals have become. And they’re exhausted: many ICU nurses are working five days of 12-hour shifts as they await help from nurses who are getting crash courses in ventilator management.

Perspectives for and by nurses, from many angles.

Our goals during this pandemic are to serve as a reliable and up-to-date source of information and advocacy for those on the front line, to bear witness and give nurses and other health workers a voice during these uncertain times.

We’ve been using this blog to bring you evidence-based information about the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly via posts by our clinical editor Betsy Todd, whose expertise is in public health and infectious disease. She has done a yeoman’s job, researching the latest information and ensuring what we publish on PPE and COVID-19 is in in accord with the most current state of knowledge at the time—even contacting study researchers to verify facts […]

2020-03-30T15:03:14-04:00March 30th, 2020|healthcare social media, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
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Is Your Facility’s Computer System a Patient Safety Risk?

Discussed in this post: “How Often Do EHRs Result in Patient Harm?” (AJN, News, March).

When we first had computers in the hospital—that is, while we still charted on paper but had quick online access to lab, radiology, and pathology results and could easily look up a patient’s prior admission history—it was wonderful. No more little lab slips floating all over the nurses’ station. No more unit-to-unit searches trying to figure out who last had custody of the patient’s X-ray films. (How could objects so large be so easily lost?)

A rocky transition to EHRs.

electronic health recordsThe transition to almost fully digital charting, on the other hand, has been pretty much a nightmare from the beginning. Nursing was rarely included in initial needs assessments. Many rollouts were chaotic, without additional staffing for the inevitable glitches that are bound to occur. Training of frontline clinical staff has been routinely minimal; we seem to be expected to pick up the many fine points of new software by some kind of digital osmosis.

That elusive clinician friendly EHR.

It’s very clear at this point that electronic health records (EHRs) were designed primarily for data collection and billing purposes. I have yet to see a system that could in any way be […]

2020-03-12T08:02:22-04:00March 12th, 2020|digital health, Nursing, Technology|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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