Target Audience

This activity has been designed to meet the educational needs of nurses, physicians, and other health and legal professionals involved in the treatment and care of victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Statement of Need/Program Overview

Most health care practitioners have little training on how to provide appropriate medical care to patients who are victims of intimate partner violence. More specifically, health care practitioners have not been trained on how to accurately assess for potential lethality in intimate partner violence relationships.

Health practitioners will feel comfortable utilizing the Danger Assessment as a part of their overall medical care of the intimate partner violence patient; they will gain the knowledge needed to utilize the tool, explain the outcome to the patient, and effectively safety plan with them based on their outcome/score.

Educational Objectives

After completing this activity, the participant should be better able to:

• Discuss the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and lethality associated with this type of violence
• Identify appropriate components of a medical forensic exam for the patient who has experienced IPV.
• Explain the Danger Assessment and how to utilize it effectively in the health care setting.

Faculty

Kim Nash, BSN, RN, SANE-A, SANE-P

Faculty Bio

Ms. Nash has been practicing as a registered nurse for 15 years and as a forensic nurse for 7 years. She earned her BSN from Regis University in 1998 and became a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner in 2006. Dual board certified as a SANE-A and a SANE-P, she is part of a team of forensic nurses at Memorial Hospital, University of Colorado Health in Colorado Springs, Colorado who provide medical forensic care to more than 1200 patients per year who are victims of violence (sexual assault, intimate partner violence, child abuse, elder abuse, strangulation, human trafficking). Additionally, she provides clinical skills training through Memorial Hospital’s Simulation Laboratory, teaching sexual assault care to providers from across the US, with a special emphasis on those working in rural or underserved areas. Ms. Nash’s work at the national level includes serving on the Board of Directors for the International Association of Forensic Nurses ( IAFN) and presenting at the International Conference on Forensic Nursing Science and Practice. Additionally, she is the Past President of the Colorado Chapter of IAFN. In 2012, she served as an International consultant for a USAID project in Swaziland, Africa, mentoring local health care professionals in the care of the pediatric rape patients with an emphasis on the prevention of HIV.