Forensic Nursing

History, scope, and professional framework of forensic nursing as a specialty, including key organisations, role taxonomy, and the ethical-legal principles that underpin every clinical-forensic encounter.

The sexual assault nurse examiner: credentialing, the structure of the medical-forensic examination, patient-centred communication, and the legal architecture (consent, reporting, anonymity) that frames every SANE encounter.

The SAFE kit and its components, swabbing technique, biological specimen handling, forensic photography, and colposcopic documentation: the practical tradecraft of recovering physical evidence from a living patient.

Reading the body as a document: wound terminology, bruise ageing, the TEARS classification of anogenital injury, clinical strangulation assessment, and the structured approach to intimate-partner-violence documentation and danger appraisal.

Recognition, documentation, and reporting responsibilities when the patient cannot or does not self-identify as a victim: non-accidental injury in children, neglect and abuse in older adults, and the clinical indicators of human trafficking across its forms.

The forensic nurse outside the emergency department: the nurse death investigator at the scene, the correctional nurse in custodial settings, and the forensic psychiatric nurse navigating competency, risk, and the boundary between treatment and containment.

From examination room to witness stand: how the forensic nurse prepares, qualifies, and delivers evidence-in-chief and withstands cross-examination, including report-writing standards and the limits of nursing expertise.