SANE nurses help sex assault victims

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Wanda Pezant worked as a neonatal nurse for years, tending to premature or other fragile babies born at Woman’s Hospital. But her career path has taken a dramatic turn.

Today, she’s a “sexual assault nurse examiner,” or SANE, tending to the special needs of another fragile population — rape victims.

“I went to this lecture on sexual assault and that’s where I first heard about the SANE role. I said, ‘That’s for me — something exciting, something new, something cutting-edge,’ ” Pezant said. “I almost think I was called to it.”

Pezant trained for the specialty forensic nursing job at LSU’s University Medical Center in New Orleans.

She has brought her special skills to LSU’s Earl K. Long Medical Center, where she is coordinator of the program to help sexual assault victims cope while helping gather the DNA and other evidence that can put their attackers behind bars....


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