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Virginia Lynch, MSN, RN, FAAN, truly is America's pioneer
of forensic nursing. She didn't invent it, of course,
but she did give it a name years before the International
Association of Forensic Nurses formed in 1992 and the
American Nurses Association recognized it as a specialty
in 1995.
Emergency room and other nurses long have been expected
to identify, document and preserve legal evidence in
cases of rape, domestic violence and other injuries
suffered as the result of a crime or suspected crime,
Lynch said. They've been expected to do it without formal
forensic training and in a medical community where the
prevailing philosophy is "we're here to save lives,
not collect evidence."
During two years of independent study at the Southwestern
Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, Lynch became
increasingly interested in Alberta, Canada's successful
use of RNs as death team investigators, which began
in 1975. She said that in her studies, from 1982 to
1984, she was learning what other RNs should know but
weren't taught in nursing programs.
"I came to realize there should be a discipline
of forensic nursing that involved the sexual assault
nurse, the death investigator, the legal nurse consultant,
the clinical forensic nurse and the emergency department,
the psychiatric nurse and nursing attorneys. They were
all practicing in unique areas and they didn't have
a label. What I did was bring them together under an
umbrella," she said. "I wrote the very first
master's degree program to forensic nursing, basically
for myself," at the University of Texas-Arlington.
Today Lynch is director of forensic nursing and forensic
health science at Beth-el College of Nursing, University
of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She said it's an exciting
privilege to develop concepts, roles, titles, language
and terminology, and set the standards for a young but
growing field.
Lynch's expertise in establishing forensic nursing
programs often has taken her abroad: to Zimbabwe, El
Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Wales. She's been
a visiting scholar in Bangkok, Thailand; Shanghai, China;
Singapore, Malaysia; Brunei; and Australia.
Among the lessons Lynch imparts to graduate-level RNs
at Beth-el, particularly those who aspire to follow
in her footsteps and deal with the most negative aspects
of human life as a death investigator, is that "first
you must be an excellent clinician, because that's what
sets you apart from being a police officer. If you want
to be a police officer, be a criminal justice major."
"First and foremost, I'm a nurse," Lynch
said, but one educated in criminalistics, scientific
evaluation, and the psycho-social and legal aspects
of patients and the deceased."The role I've developed
is that of a forensic specialist in nursing, not a nursing
specialist in criminal justice."
That's a distinction important to families who lost
loved ones in the attacks of Sept. 11.
Communication and compassion
The difficult task of death notification historically
has been given to law enforcement, Lynch said. The image
of one or two blue-uniformed police officers ringing
a doorbell in the middle of the night to deliver heartbreaking
news may be a cliché, but it's based in fact.
"Human consolation is not an objective of criminal
investigation. But it is of nursing," Lynch said.
"It's one of the things we do best."
Forensic nurses, as part of a death investigation team,
are able to speak medical language and interpret physicians'
notes and medical records in ways that police officers
cannot.
Nurses are adept at taking death notifications off
the doorstep, Lynch said. "We're taught to reach
out and touch," and are prepared to offer on-the-spot
grief counseling. "We are the only discipline that
brings this gift of communication and compassion to
the science."
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