INTRODUCTION
Forensic nursing is an emerging and evolving discipline of nursing that aims to unravel health care concerns with a legal aspect of drugs. While forensic nursing has been practiced informally by nurses in several industries for several years, in response to a growing degree of sophistication in recognizing its specific body of data, it’s only recently been formally recognized.
Crime and violence deliver together two of the foremost effective systems that have an impact on the day by day lives of citizens throughout the world: fitness and justice. Violent crime and its associated trauma are troubles that situation physicians, nurses, attorneys, judges, sociologists, psychologists, social workers, forensic and political scientists, advocates, and activists, as properly as criminal justice agencies. Nobody from any of those disciplines can proceed to figure in isolation. Effective forensic case management has been hampered through lack of adequate coverage and rules to form sure protection of patients’ legal, civil, and human rights. A multidisciplinary, multi-directional solution includes the elimination and avoidance of human abuse.
This new nursing distinctiveness is evolving in response to the health care problems introduced by using criminal violence. This is often a revolutionary framework for forensic fitness care and the nurse’s role in processing victims, perpetrators, and families through the health and justice systems. In partnership with the forensic clinical sciences and thus the criminal justice system, the emerging discipline of forensic nursing science is assuming accountability for those affected through human violence and liability-related accidents.
FORENSIC NURSING: DEFINITION
Forensic nursing is characterized as the appliance of the nursing method in public or legal cases and hence the appliance of forensic health care in the light of the scientific analysis of trauma and/or loss of life involved with assault, crime, illegal conduct, liabilities, and accidents.
To acknowledge the thought of a forensic nurse specialist, we’ve to first accurately outline the period forensic. Health care and justice experts within us frequently misinterpret and misuse this term. Consistent with Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (2009), forensic ability “pertaining to the law,” specifically, that which is associated to debate (Latin: forensic, a forum) during a court of law, implying the talk between the prosecution and protection to make a decision the innocence or guilt of the accused. The forensic nurse gives direct services to personal clients, session offerings to nursing, clinical and law-related agencies, also as imparting expert courtroom testimony in areas handling the puzzling loss of life investigative processes, adequacy of offerings shipping and specialized diagnoses of precise conditions as associated to nursing” (Lynch, 1991b, p. 1).
This description won’t be derived from authentic research at the University of Texas in Arlington, which won’t be posted in 1990. Since that point, this description has remained the quality, whilst at the equal time increasing and evolving into broader definitions and emerging sub-specialties. A theoretical framework evolved from the 1990 study and continues to evolve because the practice of forensic nursing expands to affect society’s needs for forensic intervention in health care. The penalties of criminal and interpersonal violence are diagnosed as essential fitness care and human rights concerns. As a public provider profession, nursing features a responsibility to take care of standards of practice in forensic-related cases. Due to the criminal troubles worried in caring for victims of human violence, the danger of the utilization of forensically unskilled personnel to supply health care intervention has emerged as antiquated.
Illuminated health care facilities, death-investigation networks, federal departments, and institutes of higher education have today acknowledged the benefits of a forensic nurse.
THE FORENSIC NURSE: ROLES AND RELEVANCE
Nurses who apply concepts and methods of forensic science in their specialty practice include the following:
Clinical Forensic Nurse: Provides look for the survivors of crime-related damage and deaths that manifest inside the health care institution. This expert features an obligation to guard the patient’s legal rights through the desirable collection and documentation of evidence.
Forensic Nurse Investigators: Employed during a medical examiner’s/coroner’s jurisdiction and represents the decedent’s right to social justice through scientific investigation of the scene and circumstances of death. This role can also include the investigation of criminal behavior in long-term care facilities, institutionalized care, insurance fraud, and abuse, or other aspects of investigative exigency.
Forensic Nurse Examiner: Offers an incisive examination of physical and psychological trauma, deaths in question, and/or psychoanalysis in forensic events and domestic abuse.
Forensic Correctional, Institutional, or Custodial Nurse: Focuses on the care, treatment, and rehabilitation of persons who are sentenced to prisons or jails for violation of criminal statutes and need medical assessment and intervention. Legal Nurse Consultant: Provides witness testimony and education to judicial, criminal justice, and health care professionals in areas like personal injury, product liability, and malpractice, among other legal issues associated with civil and criminal cases.
Nurse Attorney: A RN with a Juris Doctorate who practices as an attorney at law, generally specializing in civil or criminal cases involving healthcare-related issues.
Nurse Coroner: A RN serving as an elected officiator of death duly authorized by state and jurisdictional statutes to supply the investigation and certification of questioned deaths; to work out the cause and manner of death, also because of the circumstances concerning the decedent’s identification and notification of next of kin.
Each of those forensic nursing roles is investigative, requiring specific knowledge of the law and therefore the skill of witness testimony. The prevalence of criminal and liability-related trauma indicates a growing need for health care providers to intercede on behalf of social justice; to acknowledge and report crime-related injury and death; to form sure accurate documentation and security of evidence; and to gauge, assess, and treat offenders.
THREE MAJOR POSTINGS IN THE FIELD OF FORENSIC NURSING
The Forensic Nurse Examiner
An RN specifically trained to provide comprehensive care within the medico-legal management of forensic patients with demonstrated competency within the performance of the forensic examination and thus the power to testify as a witness during a court of law can assume the title, forensic nurse examiner. Recorded nursing and forensic experience, registration, professional success, and other appropriate requirements shall determine the skill of the nurse.
Forensic nurse examiners will be presented by people of all ages who have alleged felony or liability-related trauma. Physical, psychological, or sexual abuse in both live and deceased patients requires forensic examination. Forensic nurse examiners enhance patient care through their expertise, patient education, referrals, and psychotherapy. Forensic nursing programme work with perceived physical and/or mental signs due to violent abuse, Abuse, and negligence, which are frequently undiagnosed and often require urgent attention as an ongoing practice investigation of causative factors. The forensic nurse examiner is additionally responsible for the forensic care of the criminal suspect or offender, providing unbiased, objective assessment, and treatment within the clinical or correctional setting.
The Forensic Clinical Nurse Specialist
The first official role of the forensic clinical nurse practitioner was to introduce forensic science into nursing practice. The forensic clinical nurse specialist is defined as a nurse educated at the graduate level (Master of Science in nursing) during a clinical specialist program in forensic nursing at a regionally accredited institution of upper learning Texas becomes the first state with the State Board of Nurse Examiners to control the issue of forensic clinical nurse specialists as a sophisticated work role.
However, the majority of nurses who first applied forensic science to patient care were registered nurses without advanced education in nursing or forensic science. These nurses were the collective force that formed the specialty of forensic nursing, displaying the determination and determination that is the foundation of today’s forensic nursing.
Things are evolving as research and technology continue to progress and test nurses’ expertise and skills. There are no surgeons, lawyers, scientists, or judges who practice their trade without specialized schooling. These are, moreover the peers with whom we interface, cooperate, and advise on forensic matters, as well as discussion within the courts of law. Ideally, forensic professional nurse practitioner applicants must hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing or Master of Science degree in Nursing and must be 3-5 years of clinical practice and forensic skills history. As forensic nurses becoming the benchmark by which forensic health care is assessed, we must step up to a trained, certified, and certified witness stand in our field of expertise.
Forensic Nursing Process
In 1995, the American Nurses Association Congress of Clinical Practice gave special status to forensic nursing and endorsed the proven application in the nursing method. The forensic nursing process centers on the individual and creates a feedback loop that ensures a dynamic framework for the re-evaluation and updating of treatment plans. Collaboration is essential to the forensic nursing method (Lynch, 2006).
The following concepts are among the variables that influence the forensic nursing process:
Assessment: Identification of forensic situation, potential victims
Planning: Investigation
Intervention: Documentation about the situation, collection of evidence, interviewing, provision of appropriate care, reporting to the appropriate legal agency
Evaluation: Post-intervention review
The forensic nurse also provides traditional nursing interventions such as crisis care for traumatized victims and their families (Lynch, 2006).
APPLICATIONS OF FORENSIC NURSING
1. Forensic nurses are practicing in hospitals and outside the city, creating a difference in people’s lives.
2. Identify concerns that would have a legal impact on society.
3. They report injuries and put together groups to discuss issues such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and child abuse.
4. They deal with grieving family members as death happens unexpectedly.
5. They operate as mental hospitals with inmates and those who are unable to comprehend the effects of their actions.
6. Forensic nurses contribute to emergency preparation and response.
7. They are both entrepreneurs and legal case consultants, helping lawyers to understand the complicated medical terminology and how the community receives care.
8. Wherever there is an accident or risk for injury, the forensic nurse has a role to play.
EVIDENCE
Evidence must be compiled in an organized and comprehensive way. Types of evidence collected is listed below:
Evidence includes the following: – All clothing, jewellry, any items in pockets, Any items removed from the body
- Dirt (physical evidence)
- Saliva (biological evidence)
- Paint chips (physical evidence)
- Semen (biological evidence)
- Insects (biological evidence)
- Plant material (biological evidence)
- Dried or fresh blood (biological evidence)
- Fabric (physical material)
- Additional physical and biological material
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Developing a replacement area of practice may be a daunting experience that brings together diverse practitioners who understand the mutual gain from joint practice, data sharing, and shared achievements to accomplish collective goals. We must be obsessed with strengthening patient services for at-risk communities and with the development of knowledge technology that revolutionizes forensic nursing science, clinical care, and education.
Partnerships with forensic nurses and practitioners from other disciplines with common values must be fostered in the reduction of risks to health and justice.
CONSEQUENCES
Positive Consequences
Forensic nursing can also be a diverse and changing discipline, and the lack of experience of nurses with the nature of the world may serve as an obstacle to the provision of specialized treatment. The advantages of the presence of forensic nurses within the health care sector should be identified to the government, health care professionals, and patients. The division consisted of 10 subcategories: increased efficiency, better lawfulness of nurses, the calmness of nurses, avoidance of infringement of the rights of patients, Advancement in comparable developing nations, decreased costs, increased precision and speed in handling forensic investigations, improved performance of the Legal Medicine Association and increased jobs.
Negative Consequences
This field of research contained two subcategories: position dispute with other professions and nursing shortages. Conflict in organizations between classes happens as individuals are influenced by labour priorities or practices. Negative implications of the involvement of forensic nurses can emerge if forensic nurses cannot find a proper place concerning other legal occupations, such as forensic medicine or midwifery, due to a clash of positions. Another detrimental effect is the absence of breastfeeding.
CONCLUSION
If planners and decision-makers have a constructive outlook about the presence of forensic nurses, improved forensic facilities for clients can be anticipated by structured preparation programs, the creation of forensic teams, and therefore the skill of this field can offer multiple benefits.
REFERENCES
- Duval, J. B., Lynch, V. A. (2010). Forensic Nursing Science – E-Book. United Kingdom: Elsevier Health Sciences. [UNIT I: Introduction to Forensic Nursing Science, SUB: 1. Evolution of Forensic Nursing Science]
- American Academy of Forensic Sciences. (2010). Website home page. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from http://www.aafs.org.
- Consequences of Presence of Forensic Nurses in Health- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7299418/
- CSI & U: Collection and Preservation of Evidence in the Emergency – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247155305_CSI_U_Collection_and_Preservation_of_Evidence_in_the_Emergency_Department
- Forensic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice – https://books.google.com/books?id=APgVX1WcuYcC
