January 3, 2011

Governor’s grant continues and expands forensic nurse training

Renewed funding of a grant from the Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention will allow nurses from around the region to attend sexual assault forensic nurse examiner training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing.

This is the fifth year in which faculty member Daniel Sheridan has received the grant to conduct two 40-hour adolescent/adult sexual assault forensic nurse examiner sessions. “A large percentage of the nurses throughout Maryland who are doing forensic sexual assault evidence exams have been trained through one of the previous Hopkins sessions,” Sheridan said, noting that the school teaches two out of the three adolescent/adult forensic nurse examiner trainings in Maryland.

The class sessions are based on recommendations from the International Association of Forensic Nurses; to complete the 40 to 60 additional clinical hours, Sheridan helps place the participants in programs close to their homes.

The GOCCP also funded Sheridan to transfer a minimum of eight hours of the sexual assault training material to an online format. “By transitioning this 40-hour course to at least three days of an online format, we’ll be saving local programs thousands of dollars per each nurse trained,” he said.