Order of Canada<\/a>, for her leadership in forensic nursing over the past few decades. She<\/p>\n\u201cI was stunned. Just unbelievable. And never imagined this type of honour being given to me,\u201d Early told Daily Hive.<\/p>\n
Early started B.C.\u2019s first forensic nurse program in the early \u201990s at the Surrey Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n
A couple of years prior, she was working in the emergency department as a nurse clinician when they received a complaint from a RCMP officer who had brought someone who had been sexually assaulted, but had a long delay in receiving care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the standard,\u201d Early said. \u201c\u2018Well, they\u2019re not hurt, so we\u2019ll just look after everybody else first.’\u201d<\/p>\n
But because of the complaint, Early was tasked with reviewing the patient\u2019s chart, and she started digging into some of the research. She discovered that in the mid-70s, a group of U.S. nurses had started examining people who presented with sexual violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I thought, \u2018It is 1992, and none of this has come to Canada,’\u201d she said. \u201cI thought, \u2018Wouldn\u2019t this be a nice thing to have here? Wouldn\u2019t that make a difference? Wouldn\u2019t that mean that women and men and children \u2014 like this lady that I\u2019m investigating \u2014 wouldn\u2019t have to wait?’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that became the beginning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After putting together a proposal and applying for funding, Early co-founded what was then the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program (now the Forensic Nursing Service) at Surrey Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n
In 1994, she was the first registered nurse to perform a sexual assault exam in B.C. She would later create the first forensic health sciences certificate program at BCIT and co-found the Canadian Forensic Nurses Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cSheila\u2019s work as a sexual assault nurse examiner and forensic nurse has had an extraordinary impact on the lives of countless victims of sexual violence,\u201d said Winston Sayson, a former Crown Prosecutor, in a release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thousands of individuals who received comfort, dignity and expert care as a direct result of her work bears testament to the difference she has made.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is forensic nursing?<\/p>\n
Forensic nursing straddles three different areas: health care, law enforcement, and the legal system, Early explained.<\/p>\n
While today it is commonly used in cases of sexual assault and violence, Early said the profession should be applied to other areas of health care, like mental health, car crashes, human trafficking, and elder mistreatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, that\u2019s the part that\u2019s not always clear,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the only people who get specialized care are those who have been involved in violence and trauma related to intimate partner violence, strangulation, sexual abuse in any form. So it\u2019s not everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retired Fraser Health nurse Sheila Early now joins a club with Canadians that includes Ryan Reynolds, Gord Downie,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-399941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}