UNF Offers Online Legal Nurse Consultant Program

A comprehensive online legal nurse consultant program offered by the University of North Florida's Division of Continuing Education and Legal Studies Institute was launched Sept. 30, .

"Legal nurse consulting is one of the top 10 hot careers of the future for registered nurses," says Marcelle Lovett, dean of UNF's Continuing Education Division. "Our Web-based course provides a flexible, affordable way for nurses anywhere to prepare for the profession."

Course instructor Nancy Ellington comments, "Utilizing our previous classroom experience and our background in the field, fellow instructor Geri Johnson and I have developed this program to allow a unique way of learning. We hope to reach nurses interested in exploring this career and help them enter this exciting area of nursing."

The 32-week course enables students to develop an understanding of the legal nurse consulting profession, the role of the legal nurse consultant in the judicial system and the ethical considerations. The history and evolution of the legal nurse consultant are reviewed, legal theories and the legal process are defined and the practice environment for legal nurses is examined.

Modules include sessions covering an introduction to legal nurse consulting; ethics and professionalism; an overview of the legal system; liability, informed consent and care standards; treatment decisions; complex litigation; roles of the legal nurse consultant; interaction of plaintiff and defense clients; medical record analysis and bill analysis; professional negligence and much more.

Instructors Ellington and Johnson, of Medical Review & Analysis, Inc. in Jacksonville, Fla, have a total of 15 years of experience as legal nurse consultants and more than 50 years of combined nursing experience. For more details, call or visit www.ce.unf.edu/legalnurseonline.html.

Violence Against Nurses Escalates

With just a few exceptions, the average hospital is not a place most healthcare professionals would expect violence, yet the number of attacks on nurses is escalating, according to Anna Gilmore-Hall, RN, writing about this disturbing phenomenon in an article in the July issue of the American Journal of Nursing. Nurses are coming under attack from patients as well as loved ones, Gilmore-Hall says, reporting that a 47-year-old nurse in a Port St. Lucie, Fla. hospital was attacked and killed by a patient, while a 27-year-old nurse was killed in a clinic in Guam when she attempted to help another nurse who had been shot and killed by her estranged husband. A nurse working a high-risk psychiatric unit in Quincy, Mass. was attacked by a patient who had threatened her in the past; she was saved by another schizophrenic patient who came to her rescue. These nurses are among the 72 percent of nurses who say they don't feel safe at work, according to the International Council of Nurses.

According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), every day more than 9,000 nurses and healthcare workers are injured or verbally or physically attacked while at work. Assaults that result in severe injuries or death usually make the news, Gilmore-Hall says, but it's the greater number of cases that go unreported that has the nursing community worried. The American Nurses Association has lobbied the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) to address violence in the workplace, but so far it has only issued its "Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare Workers" that addresses management commitment and employee involvement, worksite analysis, hazard prevention and control and safety and health training.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study showed that between and , 69,500 nurses were assaulted, compared to 10,000 physicians assaulted. While the legal penalty for harming a doctor can be stiff, few states penalize offenders for hurting nurses. A study by the National Institutes of Health revealed that 1 in 3 nurses under the age of 30 planned to quite their jobs within the year.

Book Review

CHILDREN WHO WITNESS HOMICIDE AND OTHER VIOLENT CRIMES

By Tascha Boychuk-Spears, PhD, RN
Specialized Training Services: San Diego,

Tascha Boychuk-Spears, PhD, RN, one of the foremost authorities on children who witness violence, has written a gripping, compelling book documenting this pioneering field of juvenile forensic psychology. Spears acknowledges that interviewing child victims and witnesses has come under scrutiny -- and sometimes criticism -- in the courtroom and in academic circles that debated the fine line between investigative and counseling methods.

Through case studies and personal accounts from children, families, counselors, child service providers and members of law enforcement, Spears explains investigative interview strategies and how to counsel traumatized children. Spears draws upon her many years of forensic and clinical work in which she has counseled and interviewed more than 3,000 children. Book topics range from interviewing very young children, child deaths in foster care, cold case homicides witnessed by children, managing active children, children who witness domestic violence, plus a timely chapter on child abductions. While Spears explores the seemingly worst side of mankind throughout the book, particularly brutal to read and absorb is the chapter on counseling children who witness severe violence and post-traumatic stress.

By turns powerful, upsetting and provoking, "Children Who Witness Homicide and Other Violent Crimes" belongs on the book shelf of any members of the forensic, legal or law enforcement community because, as Spears so convincingly writes, "These profound accounts remind us not to trivialize violence but instead call us to research and service."

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