KOOTENAI COUNTY, Idaho — The first time Megan Lorincz conducted a sexual assault examination in an emergency room, it was because she was the senior nurse on shift, so despite having no training for dealing with an assault victim or with taking forensic evidence, she conducted the exam.
Lorincz is now the manager for the Forensic Nurse Examiner program for Kootenai Health, one of the only programs training nurses to be Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners in the West. Lorincz is now able to train other nurses so they don’t have to share the feelings she experienced being so unprepared to conduct a rape kit.
“You fear that you’ll be subpoenaed,” said Crystal Burris, a SANE certified registered nurse who conducted her first sexual assault examination in the same circumstances.
Burris enrolled in Lorincz's forensic program because she's been seeking more training for assault cases in the 10 years since her first examination.
“I was basically chosen at random to do a sexual assault exam, or collect a rape kit, and I had no previous training,” she said. “They don’t teach you this in nursing school. They don’t teach you forensics, sexual assault care or how to talk to a sexual assault patient.”
The course is 64 hours of training, much of it done by Lorincz, followed by 40 hours of clinical lab training before students complete a full set of clinical examinations with two simulated patients.
To read the full article, visit our news partner the Coeur d'Alene Press.
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