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As 2020 comes to a close, IAFN would like to wish its members, partners and other industry professionals a safe and happy holiday season. As we reflect on the past year for the industry, we would like to provide the readers of the Forensic Nurses News a look at the most accessed articles from the year. Our regular publication will resume Thursday, Jan. 7.
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Coronavirus shelter-at-home rules upend US child abuse prevention system
Reuters
From April: Social distancing restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus have taken a steep toll on the already fragile systems U.S. cities and states use to track and prevent child abuse and neglect.
Chronically understaffed and underfunded agencies across the country say calls to the hotlines they rely on to flag abuse and neglect are down by as much as 70 percent.
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She didn't want a pelvic exam. She received one anyway
The New York Times
From February: Janine, a nurse in Arizona, checked into the hospital for stomach surgery in 2017. Before the procedure, she told her physician that she did not want medical students to be directly involved. But after the operation, Janine said, as the anesthesia wore off, a resident came by to inform her that she had gotten her period; the resident had noticed while conducting a pelvic exam.
“What pelvic exam?” Janine, 33, asked. Distressed, she tried to piece together what had happened while she was unconscious. Why had her sexual organs been inspected during an abdominal operation, by a medical student? Later, she said, her physician explained that the operating team had seen she was due for a Pap smear.
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Rape kit backlogs continue to delay justice for victims
Law 360
From September: As of July 2020, Virginia is only the sixth state, along with Washington, D.C., to have cleared its rape kit backlog, according to the End the Backlog campaign, a national initiative seeking to have all rape kits tested. This means that thousands of sexual assault victims in other states have yet to have their kits tested and their attackers remain free. While many states are trying to end their backlogs using grant funding and passing legislation to prevent the problem from happening again, they are finding the testing process to be more time-consuming and complicated than they initially anticipated.
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Forensic nurses offer victims an opportunity to control what happens next
Fox 26 Houston
From February: Another valuable tool has been added to the arsenal in fighting human trafficking in the Houston area. Houston was recently considered to be the largest hub of human trafficking in the country, but in true Houston style, the community is coming out in full force to fight this.
A new task force is in place, and they're teaming up with a group of forensic nurses to help victims while trying to find the evidence to stop their offenders.
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Media's reporting on gun violence does not reflect reality, study finds
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine via EurekAlert!
From October: A new study, led by the doctors who regularly treat gunshot victims, examined the way the media covers shootings and found that news reports place a disproportionate emphasis on fatal and multiple shootings, while also focusing on uncommon victims, such as women. The researchers fear that the gap between what is covered — and what goes uncovered — in the news could be painting an unrealistic picture of gun violence, which might affect the way the public perceives it. The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine.
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Domestic violence and child abuse will rise during quarantines. So will neglect of at-risk people, social workers say
ProPublica
From March: While most Americans huddle inside their homes watching and worrying as the coronavirus pandemic stalks the country, desperate emails have poured into ProPublica, some almost shouting their fears for the unseen victims of the vast and unprecedented national shutdown.
A Florida social worker wrote of her panic for her developmentally disabled clients, who are shut in their homes, unable to even use the bathroom without help. What will happen to them if she and her colleagues fall ill?
“We’re going to be seeing some deaths in our caseloads,” she said in an interview. “We might not even know about it until they’ve been dead for several days.”
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Radiology study suggests 'horrifying' rise in domestic violence during pandemic
HealthDay News via U.S. News & World Report
From August: X-ray evidence points to pandemic lockdowns triggering a surge in cases of domestic violence. Data from a major Massachusetts hospital found a significant year-over-year jump in intimate partner violence cases among patients — nearly all women — who sought emergency care during the COVID-19 pandemic's first few weeks.
"This data confirms what we suspected," said study co-author Mardi Chadwick Balcom. "Being confined to home for a period of time would increase the possibility for violence between intimate partners."
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'Epidemic': 75% of workplace assaults happen to healthcare workers
ABC News
From January: Three-quarters of all workplace assaults happen to healthcare workers, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And right now, unlike other professions, there is no federal law requiring prevention, reporting, or action if a health care worker is assaulted while on the job.
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The price of America's inability to track child deaths from abuse and neglect? Sometimes, more lives
ProPublica
From January: Experts have long suspected that the United States badly undercounts the number of children who die from abuse and neglect. The voluntary reporting system relied on for decades may be off by at least 200 percent, they say, missing thousands of fatalities.
In 2012, Congress moved to make information about the deaths more accessible to the public by requiring states to release detailed reports on child fatalities and near-fatalities. But when The Boston Globe and ProPublica set out to collect these reports, it turned into a frustrating, three-year slog through child welfare offices from Maine to Hawaii.
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