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Allison Neal

Mrs. Taylore Weitner

English IV

19 December 2019

SANE Nursing

According to an article from Right as Rain by UW Medicine, “Many women don’t report

sexual assault. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 32.5 percent of incidents were

reported to law enforcement in 2015, a lower percentage than any other type of violent crime.”

SANE nurses are the nurses that help sexual assault victims when they do come in for help.

SANE, which stands for sexual assault nurse examiner, will help sexual assault victims in their

greatest time of need. They will collect evidence from the victims through kits to help testify in

court, if the victims want to go to court. The nurses will also comfort these victims through the

whole examination. Right as Rain also explains SANE nurses as those “on the front lines for

survivors of sexual assault who seek care in emergency departments, they recieve special

training in order to best support the emotional and physical needs of survivors, they also collect

forensic evidence that is used in police reports, and they testify in court, their work helps dispel

stereotypes about aasault, like the idea that survivors never fully heal.” Right as Rain explained

perfectly why I want to become a SANE nurse. I feel very strongly that SANE nurses are very

important in the healing process for sexual assault victims.

I found out about SANE nursing through my mother when she was a SANE nurse for

Truman Medical Center. She would explain to me the different tasks she had to do to help her

patients, and I was very interested. The main reason I would love to be a SANE nurse is to help
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sexual assault victims. I can understand how hard it can be to heal from such a destroying

event. There are some qualifications before you can become a SANE nurse. There are also many

things that you have to do to take care of your patients and yourself.

The first thing before becoming a SANE nurse is having the right qualifications for the

job. SANE nurses are typically registered nurses before they join a hospitals SANE program.

Most programs will want you to be a nurse for a minimum of two years before training to

become a SANE nurse. Many colleges have a nursing program that you can apply for after you

have gone through 2 years of pre-nursing. After you have gained your bachelor’s degree and

passed your NCLEX exam or Board exams, then you can work in a hospital as a registered nurse.

Susan Odegaard Turner writes in The Nursing Career Planning Guide about the qualifications

you need to be a registered nurse. “You must apply for either of these license. These will help

you work at an RN. This will fill the time between you getting out of college and when you get

your NCLEX or state board exams. You can administer medication, perform procedures, and

take physician orders under the direct supervision of a licensed registered nurse. (Turner 15)”

Joan Clark wrote an article about what is takes to be a SANE nurse. Clark explains the training a

SANE nurse has to go through before they can start helping patients. Clark writes, “Certified

SANEs complete 108 to 168 hours of rigorous classroom and clinical training in demonstrating

compassion and sensitivity to victims of sexual assault, conducting forensic exams and

collecting evidence, providing effective courtroom testimony, and coordinating sexual assault

victim advocacy. Collection of evidence by SANEs can mean the difference between a conviction

and a cold case.” SANE nurses also get paid a little different from registered nurses. In the

article, SANE Program Development and Operation Guide, the author explains specifically how
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SANE nurses are paid. “How SANEs are paid for both their on-call time and their time spent

seeing patients will depend on the type of setting and the budget of the organization. Types of

compensation may include:

1. On-call pay plus case pay – Nurses receive an hourly wage (typically in line with other
on-call staff at the facility) for hours of call they are available to respond when there is a
patient. If called in to see a patient, they may receive time and a half for providing
patient care.
2. Case pay – Nurses receive a flat rate for completing an examination.
3. Shift pay – Nurses receive an hourly wage, with shift and/or weekend differential, like
other departments.

Court pay – Nurses receive an hourly wage from their employer for court preparation

time and testimony time.” I plan on becoming a SANE nurse by first going to Avila University for

4 years to gain my bachelors. I then plan on working at a hospital as a registered nurse for at

least 2 years then train to be a SANE nurse. Once I have become a SANE nurse there are many

tasks that I will be asked to do.

As a SANE nurse you will be expected to help in the healing process of your patients,

both physically and mentally. SANE nursing is very similar to being a forensic nurse, as

explained by Lisa Yount in her book Forensic Science: from Fibers to Fingerprints. “After

evidence reaches the laboratory, microscopes, spectrometers, and computers become a trace

analyst’s most important tools. Microscopes reveal details of structure, and spectrometers

determine chemical makeup. Computer database of materials, such as types of paint, fibers,

and glass, let analysts identify evidence by matching.” “Trace evidence alone usually cannot

prove that a particular person committed a crime… Trace evidence can be used to pressure a

suspect to confess, however, or to make a prosecution (or defense) case more convincing to a

jury.” (Yount 65-66)” Once a patient comes in, the SANE nurses get right to work. They collect
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any evidence they can from their patient using rape kits. Joan Clark also explains in her article

what the nurses are required to do, ”SANE programs train specialized nurses and equip them to

work with sexual assault victims. They use a standard set made by the International Association

of Forensic Nurses. SANE programs have shown a 95% increase in successful prosecution of

cases with the evidence these nurses have gathered. You have to be passionate about helping

these victims to do this career. They also have to be there to comfort and lower future trauma

among the patients especially with their privacy.” If a patient wants to take their case to court,

then the SANE nurses will be right there with all of the evidence they collected. “Even if

someone doesn’t want to report the assault to police, nurses will still collect evidence in case

the survivor needs it in the future… Their specialized training also comes into play when SANE

nurses must testify in court about what injuries the survivor suffered. They also help educate

juries about the dynamics and variability of a person’s response to trauma,” explained Right as

Rain. SANE nurses don’t just collect evidence from their patients. They help their patients to

heal from their traumatic experience. Most sexual assault victims will have PTSD from what

they went through. SANE nurses just help give them a little push in the right direction toward

healing.

When I interviewed my mom she explained the mindset you need to have to be a SANE

nurse. “You can’t have the mindset that your going into the job to make the bad guys pay or put

anybody in jail. You have to have patience and compassion to listen to people’s stories. Taking

care of myself is just as important as doing a good job. Because that job is very draining

emotionally.” The first thing I asked my mom was how she got into being a SANE nurse. ”I

worked in the ER and I worked with SANE nurses and I knew the SANE manager and I just talked
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about getting on the team.” She told me why you shouldn’t automatically jump into SANE

nursing. “You need to be an experienced nurse. You need to develop the critical thinking skills.”

She also explained the stress level that comes with the job. “It’s high because your always on

call. It’s dealing with people’s most vulnerable state and it’s dealing with tragedy.” This goes

hand in hand with what Susan Odegaard Turner explained in her book The Nursing Career

Planning Guide. “Nursing is a service industry. Nurses are there for strangers in their time of

need. Nurses need to have empathy and compassionate as their fundamentals of nursing care.

As a nurse you are constantly involved, sometimes intimately, with a person. “You must learn to

take care of yourself in order to be balanced enough to provide care to others.” (Turner 1-3”

Once I finished the interview with my mom I left very informed about how to feel and act about

SANE nursing.

After talking with my mom, I understood how important it is to also take care of

yourself. It’s hard to take care of someone else when you have a hard time taking care of

yourself. I remember when my mom was a SANE nurse and I would notice the toll it took on

her. She would wake up around three in the morning to her pager going off for another case.

She would be drained all the time from this not just physically, but also mentally. She would

sometimes cry over her patients stories because it’s a lot to hold on one person’s shoulders. I

feel like she would get frustrated that she couldn’t help everyone. Most of her patients

wouldn’t want to pursue the case and take their offender to court. There was one time when

she almost went to court, but the offender plead guilty before the court date. My mom

explained that there has been a rise in sexual assault cases. She believes it’s because of stalking

and tracking on phones. At the end of the day, all you can really do is help these victims and
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survivors through their tragedy, and help stop one more criminal from doing the same thing to

another.

Overall, I feel that SANE nursing is for me. I am very interested in collecting evidence

and helping my patients through their tragedy. I want to be a healing oppertunity for these

sexual assault victims in their time of need. After doing all my research over SANE nursing I

understand how important these nurses are, and I understand how much these victims go

through. I finally know the qualifications that I need to become a SANE nurse. I also fully

understand how important it is to take care of your patients, but also taking care of yourself. In

the end, your patients stories will affect you, and you can’t take care of another person when

you’re not in the right mind to take care of yourself. I am excited to take steps toward being a

SANE nurse, and to take steps toward healing sexual assault victims.
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Works Cited

Clark, Joan. “Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault: A Health System's Nurse Examiner
Program Support Survivors.” 2017.

Princing, Mckenna. “This Is What It's Like to Be a Nurse Who Treats Sexual Assault
Survivors.” Right as Rain by UW Medicine, 27 Apr. 2018,
rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/well/stories/what-its-be-nurse-who-treats-sexual-
assault-survivors.

“SANE Program Development and Operation Guide.” Office for Victims of Crime Training
and Technical Assistance Center, www.ovcttac.gov/saneguide/management-of-
sane-programs/sexual-assault-nurse-examiners/.

Turner, Susan Odegaard. The Nursing Career Planning Guide. Jones and Bartlett
Publishers, 2007.

Yount, Lisa. Forensic Science: from Fibers to Fingerprints. Chelsea House, 2007.