Nursing in the Forensic Field
In today's world, television has made many shows that involve crimes scenes and forensic science, as well as forensic nursing. These drama laden shows often show a nurse involved with specialized duty inside the detective agency or even the police crime scene unit. While true that there are some positions available for forensic nurses within the scene of crimes, most forensic nursing jobs, deal with live patients more than those murdered.
For those nurses who belong to the American Forensic Nursing Organization or the IAFN, international Association for forensic nursing they may often work with detectives or death investigations. Most forensic nurses are actually involved with treating those victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault and others who have been victimized. A forensic nurse collects the evidence in the proper manner, and then preserves this evidence to help bring to justice those who have perpetrated crimes against the innocent. This special training in properly preserving evidence is a must for the criminal justice system as well as legal testimony taken from victims.
Forensic nurses will have more training in biological, sociological and psychological aspects than a regular nurse may have. They may also have trauma training, and psychological training for dealing with the actual death of the victim, as well as legal training. Not only must the forensic nurse be an expert at diagnosing, but they must also be good at caring for victims of sexual assault, attempted murder, child abuse, domestic violence, and be able to assist in the criminal prosecution with good attention to detail.
While a nurse of forensic science will be able to understand the proceedings involved in not only caring for the victim but also of processing the evidence, and ensuring that it cannot be destroyed or contaminated.
A relatively new nursing field, forensic nursing is rather complex. There is no national standard for licensing nurses for forensic needs, and there are many acronyms that can be used to describe the work done. A sexual assault nurse examiner is known as a SANE nurse, and SAE nurse will work in a sexual assault examiner field, and a SAFE nurse will actually be a sexual assault forensic examiner. There are many different types of designations for forensic nurses, and while all are a bit similar their focus can be slightly different.
The formidable field of forensic nursing is extremely wide. You can work with sexual assault victims and examinations, you can perform emergency room investigating procedures, and you can collect legal evidence and even be a medical examiner's nurse or legal consultant. As you can see, a forensic nurse does not just deal with murder, but is more into collecting evidence for legal proceedings.