Nursing, like medicine, is a noble profession. It demands a great deal of patience and dedication to be able to put aside your needs and tend to those of your patients, day in and day out, on shifts that are grueling and demanding. There are some forms of nursing that take more out of you than others, like forensic nursing, the saving grace being that you bring more value to the lives of people who have been broken and violated through crime and assault.
If you’re looking into the option of becoming a forensic nurse, you need to hold more than just an MSN (Master of Science in Nursing) degree from an accredited school of nursing. There are qualities that are essential to being a good forensic nurse, and these are:
- Sensitivity: You must be able to empathize with the victim and sense their pain and torment. If you tend to go about your work with clinical efficiency rather than treating each patient according to their experiences, you will not make a good forensic nurse.
- Patience: Any sexual and forensic examination takes time, and you must have the patience to soothe and assuage your patient’s fright and nervousness. It is a difficult job, one that you must handle with the maximum tolerance if you are to achieve your objectives.
- Understanding: When you have worked as a forensic nurse for a few years, the job tends to get to you. Seeing more and more rape cases on a daily basis makes you cynical and worldly-wise. You are still a good nurse, but you may no longer be able to understand a patient and do what’s best for them. This is why you need to keep working at retaining your sensitive side, the part of you that allows you to connect to total strangers and deal with their pain.
- Observant: Most patients will be too traumatized to repeat their experiences, so it’s up to you to try and find out what could have happened from the marks and wounds on their bodies. You need to make a thorough examination in order to collect enough evidence so that the perpetrator of this horrible crime can be found and punished.
Besides this, if you are training to become a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, you need to earn either the SANE-A or SANE-P certificate or both. SANE professionals work with victims of sexual assault and take care of their examination and general well-being. SANE-A allows you to work with both adolescents and adults while the SANE-P certification allows you to work with children who have been sexually abused or raped. Both professional international certifications can be earned only if you have at least two years of experience as a registered nurse (RN) and must be renewed every three years.