In 1994, Christine Jackson, MD, noticed that when victims of sexual assault were brought into area hospitals in Baltimore City, neither the physicians nor the nurses had been trained in how to collect evidence or detect injuries for these patients. Police, though, expected that the staff was trained. As a result, the outcomes of the kit collections were terrible.
Jackson wanted the hospitals to do better for the patients, so she founded the Mercy Medical Center Forensic Nursing Program. Back then, said Debra S. Holbrook, MSN, RN, SANE A, FNE A/P, specially trained nurses, who were called Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) or Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners (SAFE), were trained and educated in comprehensive care of victims of sexual assault. Mercy Medical Center, in Baltimore City, was designated the point center for this kind of medical forensic care.
"The Mercy Medical Center Forensic Nursing Program now cares for almost 1,000 patients each year, and sees all forms of interpersonal violence, including sexual assault; domestic, dating, and stalking violence; elder and vulnerable population abuse, neglect, and maltreatment; human trafficking; strangulation; trauma; chronic abuse of foreign nationals seeking asylum and T/U visas [related to human trafficking]; and suspects of all person's crimes," explained Holbrook, director of Forensic Nursing at Mercy Medical Center.
She said the program is also one of the only mobile ones in the United States -- meaning that the nurses involved are able to travel to various hospitals and institutions throughout the area. "For 25 years, the Mercy Forensic Nurse Examiner (FNE) Program has been the only mobile program of its kind in Maryland, seeing patients in all surrounding hospitals including Johns Hopkins Hospital, the University of Maryland Medical System, Shock Trauma, and all emergency departments, nursing homes, and prison systems. The Program has also created Memorandum of Understandings with all branches of the military, seeing victims from the U.S. Naval Academy, Fort Meade, Fort McHenry and Reserves, and Kimbrough Army Hospital."