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Category: Sexual Assault

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DV/IPV Sexual Assault

VAWA Confidentiality: Empowering Survivors, Protecting Information

Victim Rights Law Center has a webinar coming up on the critical topic of confidentiality, and since my general experience is that people/programs are not as good at this one as we would all hope, I encourage you to check it out (see Exhibit A — the most recent example in what has become a very dense file). VAWA Confidentiality: Empowering Survivors, Protecting Information will be held December 5th at 1pm ET. [I do not know if it will be archived, so please check with the hosts.] From the announcement:

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) requires OVW-funded victim service providers to protect survivors’ privacy. This interactive webinar will highlight how VAWA confidentiality requirements compliment survivor empowerment and offer best practices for maintaining survivors’ privacy. By participating in this webinar, victim services providers will be better able to explain how the VAWA privacy requirements relate to survivor-centered care. 

This is obviously a multidisciplinary training, so I encourage you to share with colleagues in your SARTs/MDTs. You can register for the session here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault Testimony

Articles of Note: November 2019 Edition

Time once again for Articles of Note, our monthly romp through the peer-reviewed literature. Plenty to read, plenty to consider this month (as always). Links lead to PubMed abstracts–please don’t stop there. Sift through the abstracts to decide what’s worth your time, and what doesn’t apply to your clinical life. Better yet, divide among your colleagues and get together for real-time discussion. What an excellent use of staff meeting time.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

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Sexual Assault

Free Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Course for the New MSU SANE Program

As some of you know, I have spent the last year working with Michigan State University to build a SANE program on campus. Next spring, the program will open its doors; in anticipation of its opening, we will be holding a free SANE training on January 13-17, 2020. Space will be limited, and priority will go to people who are interested in working in the program. We are hiring 4 full-time RNs and a full-time advanced practice nurse who will be the medical director of the program. Prior SANE experience is not required. Anyone interested in working in the program must attend the January course, regardless of prior SANE training or experience. This program will be staffed around the clock; there will be no on-call hours. In addition to the full-time positions, we will also be hiring a small number of adjunct positions to assist when staff members are on vacation or there is a short-term gap in the schedule.

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Kim Day and I will be the primary instructors for this course. We are fortunate that IAFN is a partner in this training, and the curriculum has been modified to address the specific and unique challenges that campus communities face, such as FERPA.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the course or any of the positions: jenifer.markowitz@gmail.com. Registration for the course should also be sent back to me.

Please also feel free to share this with non-forensic nursing listservs and social media sites, particularly for those of you in Michigan. Thanks!

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Providing Forensic Healthcare and Support to Native Communities

The Forensic Technology Center of Excellence has a webinar coming up, Providing Forensic Healthcare and Support to Native Communities. The session will be held November 21st at 1pm ET. Their sessions are archived if you aren’t able to attend live. From the announcement:

Awareness of how to provide culturally appropriate and trauma informed services to the American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) community is important for forensic examiners. This webinar will discuss includes jurisdictional factors affecting examinations, pertinent laws to consider, and health care services that may be available to AI/AN populations.

In this webinar, the presenter discusses factors that forensic examiners should be aware of when providing trauma informed, culturally appropriate services to American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) people. The presenter reviews relevant laws for forensic examiners and explains various jurisdictional factors affecting examinations, chain of custody, and prosecution. Additionally, she discusses types of health care services that may be available to AI/AN populations and provides further resources for healthcare provider training, clinical support, and survivor outreach.

Detailed Learning Objectives:

• Explain at least four factors and barriers that American Indian/Alaska Native people who have experienced domestic sexual violence may encounter when seeking health care and justice.

• Explain differences in state, federal, and tribal jurisdictions related to forensic healthcare access, law enforcement services, and control of crime prosecution.

• Locate and access at least five healthcare training resources, grant sources, and patient support entities that specifically include or promote AI/AN services.

Register for the webinar here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault

Navigating Difficult Situations: Common Issues SARTs Face

I”m out in Flagstaff this week (and then I’m headed to Korea next week), so posting may be somewhat light over the next several weeks. But here’s a webinar coming up at the end of the month for those of you looking to strengthen your MDTs: Navigating Difficult Situations–Common Issues SARTs Face is being offered by the Sexual Violence Justice Institute. It will be held November 25th from 1-2:30pm CT. From the announcement:

Sexual assault response teams are a great strategy to improve access to healing and justice for victims/survivors and increase offender accountability.  And, there are common issues or barriers that teams face as they strengthen the collaborative response. This webinar will focus on common questions that we receive from SARTs across the country. Although many SARTs experience similar issues, each situation and community requires unique strategies. We will explore the questions, offer strategies that have worked for other teams, and hear some new things that have worked in your communities!

Learning Objectives or Outcomes

  • Provide examples of common issues that sexual assault response teams face
  • Discuss strategies for navigating through those issues as a coordinator
  • Normalize these common issues while acknowledging the unique needs of communities
  • Walk away with tips and tools to guide you as work with your team

I didn’t see a registration button on their site, so you may need to contact them directly or keep checking their site.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

How to Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children — 7 Days of Ideas

Here’s a cool-looking offering: Apolitical is offering a micro-course called How to Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children — 7 Days of Ideas. I know nothing about it beyond what’s on their site, but I am thoroughly intrigued:

On November 20, 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 30 years on, major strides in children’s rights have been made, but the nature of sexual abuse and exploitation of children is evolving. Increasingly, abuse and exploitation are happening online — and often governments are ill-equipped to address these new threats.

We’ll walk you through practical approaches to addressing the issue, highlighting the most innovative tools, technologies and techniques which are working to prevent sexual violence against children. You’ll get:

  • Bite-sized activities or articles, taking 10 minutes or less per day, for 7 days
  • A practical introduction to evidence-based interventions for preventing child sexual violence – and how to apply it to your work
  • Global case studies and reading lists highlighting best practices and innovations in the field

You can complete as many or as few as you like, and you’ll have opportunities to connect with peers and experts applying these concepts globally.

To participate you must register by 15 November. See all the details here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault

Medical-Forensic Exam Payment Webinar Series from IAFN

A very excellent webinar series is coming up, courtesy of IAFN’s new medical-forensic exam billing and payment project. There are three, the first of which will be November 26, 2019 at 12pm ET: When Things Don’t Go Right: Sexual Assault Exam Billing and Payment – It’s TIME for Change! From the website: Come be apart of the solution: 10+ years post VAWA, barriers exist for victims who were guaranteed free exams, including being billed for exams and being pursued by debt collection agencies. 

Following that:

nPEP Costs HOW MUCH for the Sexual Assault Patient? December 3, 2019 at 2:30pm ET (Description: The National SAFE Protocol and the CDC recommend that every sexual assault patient be evaluated for HIV risk. However, nurse examiners are often unaware of the actual cost of HIV nPEP, and options for providing nPEP which can affect patient access to medications that may be lifesaving. At the conclusion of this webinar and with the help of four-panel members from three different states and the District of Columbia, the participants will be able to identify the current recommended guidelines for the administration of HIV nPEP to patients in the acute phase post-sexual assault. They will be able to recognize the estimated cost for HIV nPEP, articulate various HIV nPEP billing and payment coverage options, and describe various gaps in HIV nPEP coverage for sexual assault patients across the nation.)

Billing and Coding 101: Learn the Anatomy of Billing and Coding for Sexual Assault Patients like a Pro. December 19, 2019 at 2pm ET (Description: SANE program managers and hospital billing departments are unprepared to properly code requests for payment to state-designated payers for the sexual assault medical forensic examinations which can result in payment denials and patients potentially receiving bills for service, violating VAWA. With the guidance from Shelley Voci, a coding specialist, at the conclusion of this webinar, the participants will be to articulate the history of ICD-10-CM, as well as identify and describe common ICD-10-CM for sexual assault patients, and interpret an example bill for services rendered status post-sexual assault medical forensic examination.)

CEs will be available for IAFN members. The sessions will be archived, in case you can’t make the live session. Register for all the webinars here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault Testimony

Articles of Note: October 2019 Edition

It’s time once again for Articles of Note, our monthly romp through the newly published peer-reviewed literature. There is *a lot* of choice material to sort through this month, so I hope you will spend some quality time with the list. As always, links lead to PubMed abstracts.

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__________________________

Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

2018 STD Surveillance Report

(1st week of Journal Club is live, so feel free to jump in; we’ll pose new questions each Tuesday.)

The CDC just released its 2018 STD Surveillance Report and it is grim. They’re reporting increases in chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis (including congenital syphilis, which is up 185% since 2014). Helpful to know as you are considering what services to provide, including testing vs presumptive treating, medication choices, etc. As always, consult your local health department as well to get an accurate picture of the incidence and prevalence in your own community.

Read the full report here.

Table of contents if you want to jump around or are interested in specific data.

Here are your state ranking tables.

And for those of you looking for PPT slides, you can find the full downloadable list here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse DV/IPV Sexual Assault

What We Know About the Polyvictimization of Youth

The Center for Victim Research has a webinar coming up next week, What We Know About the Polyvictimization of Youth. The session will be held on September 30th at 2pm ET. From the site:

This webinar will focus on poly-victims, the subgroup of youth that endure the highest burden of victimization. We will cover how it has been studied, how often it occurs, what we know about its adverse effects and what we can do to respond to the needs of this highly victimized group of children. 

Register here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Succession Planning within Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Organizations, Part 2

Futures Without Violence has a great management session coming up, a follow-on to its original session on this topic last year. Succession Planning within Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Organizations, Part 2 will be held October 3rd at 2pm ET. From the website:

Leadership transitions can be challenging.  For non-profit organizations to succeed, it is essential to think critically about the long-term leadership needs of the organization and to prepare for leadership transitions.  Presenters will discuss key elements of a departure defined (planned) succession plan, and describe a process to plan for leadership transition within a domestic violence/sexual assault organization.  The webinar will also showcase the experience of succession planning and on boarding process of an executive director in an organization that serves survivors of gender-based violence.  We will share planning tools and resources and provide a question-answer period.

As a result of this webinar, participants will be better able to:

  • Identify key elements of a departure defined (planned) leadership succession.
  • Apply lessons learned from a real life example of succession planning to your own organizational decision-making.
  • Utilize critical tools and resources for succession planning.

Register here.

Succession planning is more important than we typically discuss in forensic healthcare. Many clinical programs tend to hinge on the energy and vision of a single person, and when that person leaves, there is significant peril that the program can fail or end up diminished in a variety of ways. Thinking about the transition of leadership, both as someone comes on board and as someone leaves, is critical. This is a great topic for anyone interested in management or sustainability of clinical programs.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault Testimony

Articles of Note: September 2019 Edition

It’s time once again for Articles of Note, our monthly romp through the peer-reviewed literature. Nothing free this month, but plenty worth tracking down, so I encourage you to spend some time with the list. It’s particularly fitting that I get a new edition up since I am sandwiching it between two weeks of teaching testimony, this week at Ft. Hood and next week at the annual IAFN conference, where we discuss at length the importance of fidelity to the science.

All links lead to PubMed abstracts. Happy reading!

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______________________________

Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

Human Trafficking: Shooting Our Wounded and How to Stop

IPSCAN has its lasted webinar posted for viewing, Human Trafficking: Shooting Our Wounded and How to Stop. From the website:

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery and the human rights issue of our lifetime, affecting the vulnerable, poor, and oppressed around the world. In this FREE webinar, Dr. Celia Williamson, director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo, will give an overview of trafficking in the U.S. and around the world, including the process of trafficking, indicators to identify victims and traffickers, and how to report it. Rather than continuing to “shoot the wounded” with quick fixes or less-than-best practices, Dr. Williamson advocates for meaningful interventions at the individual and system levels. These can interrupt this practice, create collective change, and transform the way we think about trafficking, from a “Rescue and Restore” mission to a matter of Human Rights.

This is definitely a more introductory webinar, so if you have new members of your team (clinical or MDT) who haven’t had much continuing education on issues of trafficking, particularly trafficking of children and teens, this is a decent option. Nothing revolutionary, but solid info.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault

Virginity Testing: A Mini Clinical Guide For a Thing That Doesn’t Exist

This post on Reddit’s Relationship Advice forum from a young woman whose fiance wanted her to have her hymen checked before their wedding (by his dad!) has been making its way around my Twitter feed, so I thought it would be a good time to re-up a few resources here. (BTW, here’s her update for all of you wondering.) Of course, virginity testing isn’t an actual thing, but we know that sometimes patients are brought in for that very purpose, so you can consider this a mini clinical guide:

Virginity and Hymen Testing: No Factual, Scientific or Medical Basis (Physicians for Human Rights)

Myths Surrounding Virginity: A Guide for Service Providers (International Rescue Committee)

Virginity Testing: A Systematic Review (Olson & Garcia-Moreno, 2017. Reproductive Health; FULL TEXT)

Eliminating Virginity Testing: An Interagency Statement (World Health Organization)

As always, I encourage you to follow the footnotes in these documents because there is a treasure trove of related readings that are relevant to practice.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault Testimony

Going Beyond Rape Kits

I am in Hawaii this week and while I will try and get posts up with some regularity, it will be a long week and the hours here are not my own. So, we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, I’d like to draw your attention to this excellent article by IAFN CEO, Jennifer Pierce-Weeks, Going Beyond the Breakthrough Means Going Beyond Rape Kits. It beautifully encapsulates why the sexual assault medical-forensic exam is so much more than just collecting samples for a kit. Trying to figure out how to articulate in court why it’s important that patients come in and see us, even if they don’t want evidence collected? Well, Jen just helped you out by putting it down on paper. And she did it in less than a thousand words. Do yourself a favor–read it and then share it with your team.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault

Five Lies We Tell Ourselves About Trauma

Jason Kander and his wife Diana published an excellent article over at Crooked Media today, Five Lies We Tell Ourselves About Trauma. It’s 100% relevant to the work we all do because it applies equally to the issue of secondary trauma, which is something we should be discussing far more in our field. It would be a great topic for an upcoming staff meeting–particularly as a way to check in with the team.

There’s a lot that resonates, but one thing in particular:

I made the mistake of trying to rank—and therefore disregard—my own trauma for many years, and that only made things worse. If something happened and you haven’t felt right since, then you should address it. To quote a friend, “Somewhere there’s a vet who was in the first wave at the D-Day invasion telling himself to get over it because he was all the way in the back of the landing craft.” 

Thinking “other people have it worse” doesn’t actually diminish your own trauma, it just diminishes your power to heal, because your brain only knows what you experienced. Whether it’s combat, a serious accident, or an assault, there are many possible sources of trauma. Telling yourself to get over it, or thinking “I shouldn’t let this bother me,” will get you nowhere. 

Read the whole article here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault

STI Update

After testimony, FHO readers like a good STI update best, and that’s what we have today. The National Network of STD Clinical Prevention Training Centers is offering a one-hour webinar providing an update of the info presented at this summer’s National Sexual Health Conference. It’s free and has 1.0 CEU/CME attached, so it’s good for all your board certifications/licensures. The session will be held September 3rd at 12pm MST. I do not know that it will be archived–you would need to contact the site directly to find out. From the site:

This one hour webinar will cover national clinical highlights of the 2019 National Sexual Health Conference originally presented in Chicago, IL, July 10-12, 2019. 

(Sorry–not a whole lot of info to go on, I know.) Register here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Collaborative Strategies and Tools to Meet the Needs of Survivors of Human Trafficking

Futures Without Violence has a good SART/MDT/CCR* flavored webinar coming up for those of you looking for something for your local teams: Collaborative Strategies to Meet the Needs of Survivors of Human Trafficking. The session will take place on August 22nd at 2pm ET; it will also be archived. From the website:

This webinar will highlight collaborative work undertaken by multi-disciplinary teams across the U.S. to support domestic and sexual violence and human trafficking (DV/SA/HT) survivors.  Presenters will share how their partnerships or task forces were initiated; strategies to enhance client services and case coordination; and tools and training opportunities to build or expand collaborative responses for HT survivors across communities and states.  The webinar will share lessons learned from a community-based DV/SA/HT advocacy program, a law enforcement-led program, and a statewide task force operated by the Attorney General’s Office. It will also feature technical assistance and training resources offered by Futures Without Violence.  Time will be included for audience question/answer and discussion.

After the webinar, participants will be better able to:

  • Define the unique service needs HT victims that differ from domestic violence and sexual assault.
  • Identify community and state-wide strategies to develop new collaborations or expand existing networks to support survivors of HT.
  • Clarify multidisciplinary professional and organizational roles in coordinating services for trafficked survivors.
  • Utilize resources to help build or expand multi-disciplinary teams and task forces to support survivors of HT.

Register here.

*Sexual Assault Response Team/Multidisciplinary Response Team/ Coordinated Community Response because, acronyms 🙂

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault

New Clinical Guide: Caring for Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming and Non-Binary Patients in the Forensic Setting

In doing some writing this week for one of my projects I realized I had a decent collection of resources for a much-needed clinical guide: Caring for Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming and Non-Binary Patients in the Forensic Setting. It’s long overdue, and while I know it is not exhaustive, it’s a good starting place for everyone who hasn’t given this enough (or any) attention in their programs. To be clear, most of the guidance is focused more on general care issues than forensic setting-specific issues, which means it would be ideal to take one (or a few) of the resources listed here and have a robust discussion with your team about how to apply the recommendations to your own policies, documentation, and general approaches to patient communication. It’s a great topic for your next staff meeting.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault Testimony

Articles of Note: August 2019 Edition

It’s time once again for Articles of Note, our regular romp through the peer-reviewed science. Check it: we have not one, but two scientific papers this month on physicians committing misconduct, so that’s fascinating. We also get a look at how a clinician’s personal history of domestic violence impacts clinical care. Needless to say, there’s some good reading to be done in this edition (as always). Most links go to PubMed abstracts except where otherwise indicated.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

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