It’s hard to believe that in less than a week I will be heading to Puerto Rico for the 2012 IAFN Annual Scientific Assembly. I am so excited to see friends and colleagues, and this year’s sessions are going to be pretty fantastic. As always, please come find me and say hello. I will be running around like a crazy person this year, I’m sure, but I will be a lot more visible in my presidential duties, so I am looking forward to getting to meet many more of you. Of course, before we can even look to next week, let’s take a look back at what’s been going on since last we spoke:
Category: Child Abuse
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In Plain View
The new issue of the New Yorker magazine has a piece by Malcolm Gladwell, In Plain View: How Child Molesters Get Away With It. It focuses on Jerry Sandusky, but of course, in the wake of this week’s emerging news about cover ups from the Boy Scouts (to name but one high profile series of offenses against kids), it’s timely for a variety of reasons.
L’shana Tovah to all my friends and colleagues celebrating the Jewish New Year (5773)! As is almost always the case on a Jewish holiday, I am hanging out with the military (this time at Maxwell AFB). I did manage to bake an apple and honey cake before leaving, my singular nod to tradition this year. As you all know, there is always work to be done, new year or not. But before I head out to teach for the day, a few things I’ve been reading since last we spoke:
Good morning, my friends. It’s going to be a busy week, as I head to San Diego tomorrow for the Emergency Nurses Association conference. If you’re going to be there, please come find me–there’s a good chance I’ll be somewhere near the IAFN exhibitor’s booth in between work sessions and actual conference sessions (I have no idea when the last time was that I went to a conference where I wasn’t presenting!). In the meantime, a few things that have caught my eye since last we spoke:
How is it possible I went most of the summer without posting one of these? Embarrassing. What follows is what’s caught my eye from the August/September/October journals (with a couple of late July articles tossed in for good measure). As always, this is not an exhaustive list, but I do have to say, it’s a pretty good one. There’s a lot of great looking research among this group of pubs.
A reader asked me if I had anything on drug endangered children that could be used for staff training. As it so happens, I do: the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children (whose healthcare protocols I’ve mentioned before here) has many archived webinars on this topic that are geared toward both law enforcement and medical audiences:
In keeping with yesterday’s post, I was happy to discover that VAWnet announced its newest special collection today (what timing!), Men and Boys: Preventing Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence. And for those of you who feel like, as healthcare providers this is interesting, but not relevant to the work we do in caring for patients, I ask you to at least spend some time with this section of the collection:
It was a pretty difficult news weekend; I tried to force myself to read more than just coverage of the Aurora shootings. As it turns out, there were some pretty insightful pieces written on Aurora, mainly on the need for gun control. I’ve included the best of what I read, along with a few other interesting articles and blog posts since last we spoke (and if nothing else, please read the last piece to which I linked–it’s pure happiness):
The immense frustration I feel at this story of one southern governor who feels that anti-violence programs don’t need a line item in the Department of Health’s budget because sexual and domestic violence programs “distract” from the public health mission is difficult to articulate…
Just a reminder that the next IAFN webinar in the 2012 series is coming up July 25th from 2-3:15pm. Child Sexual Abuse Exams: Intepreting Acute and Chronic Physical Findings is going to be presented by one of my favorite peds people, Dr. Marie Marino, current IAFN Board member and Past-President. Cost is $15/member ($30/non-members) and will net you 1 CEU.
I know I’m not alone in saying that this heat wave that so many of us have been experiencing has been pretty brutal. While the oppressive temps seem to be breaking a bit, there hasn’t been much motivation to leave the confines of my air conditioned row house for the past week. Much of the reading I did this weekend was about weather, but there were a few FHO-type news items to draw my attention:
I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done this weekend, since this happened, so I don’t have quite as much to report, Since Last We Spoke:
Here’s what I love–1.) this month’s Articles of Note is full of amazing stuff to choose from; and 2.) there are many forensic nurses (and subscribers to this site from both the US and Canada) among the authors of the articles listed this month. And one more thing about point #2: not all of those forensic nurses have PhDs. So for those of you who feel like you can’t write because you didn’t go to graduate school, I would like to point out that this isn’t true–the literature needs our PhD’d research colleagues, and *also* the expert clinicians, whatever their educational credentials, contributing to the science (see this editorial for a good example of what you might consider writing). So once again, it’s time for our monthly roundup of articles that have caught my attention. Remember, this is not an exhaustive list of what’s new in the literature, but it should give you a good place to start. Links lead to abstracts unless full-text is noted.
Talk of the Nation on NPR had a segment today on the secrecy often surrounding childhood sexual abuse. Among the guests was Dr. David Lisak who many of you know from his work on undetected rapists. Listen to the podcast or read the full transcript here.
There’s been some interesting stuff in the news since last we spoke (I’m talking to you, Michigan). Click through for links, plus a new video from Half the Sky.
The CDC’s next Public Health Grand Rounds, Breaking the Silence–Public Health’s Role in Intimate Partner Violence Prevention, will be held Tuesday, June 19th from 1-2pm EDT. The session will be archived, so if you can’t make the live webcast, you’ll have opportunities to view it later on. You can find the archived previous webcasts here (including one last month on the emerging issue of multi-drug resistant gonorrhea).
I am starting a regular Monday morning series here on FHO called Since Last We Spoke. Monday mornings are traditionally a slow time on this site, so I am going to be linking to some of the relevant stuff I have read over the weekend that you may have missed. With the #Sandusky trial starting today, the list is a bit heavy on that coverage, but there was a lot of interesting stuff online over the past several days, particularly related to sexual violence.
As promised, a clinical guide on issues related to testimony. Please let me know if I have left something out and it can be added in. Every attempt will be made to update this guide on a regular basis.
(Today is my 43rd birthday…when I got home from Kansas this morning, this is what I discovered in my fridge, because my partner is a clown.)
VAWnet has a new special collection available, Enhanced Services to Children and Youth Exposed to Domestic Violence: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned. Considering the conversation we just had at this week’s training on the issue of child witnessing, the timing couldn’t be better.
Have a great weekend, all.
NSVRC has a brand new elearning opportunity available. The Brain, Body and Trauma is described on their site as “… an overview of the neurobiological and psychological implications of sexually violent trauma and the information and skills necessary for victim service providers to provide trauma-informed services.” You must register to access any of the elearning content, but there’s no fee for the course.