SANE nurses in the ED

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I work in a smaller emergency department, we aren't rural but we aren't in city, just an average size town. We have 21 beds, I am just curious on how emergency departments that are about our size deal with rape survivors? I know SANE nurses are exclusively trained to handle these patients appropriately, our ED has three SANE nurses, who aren't always on duty, how does your ED handle these patients if there is no SANE nurse on duty? We have a lot of new nurses working in our department, and am just worried one of us are going to get a patient like this one night and none of us have ever used the rape kit or know the required charting.

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Specializes in Reproductive & Public Health.

Where I live, there are a handful of RNs/APRNs who are SANE trained, and they rotate call to cover all the local hospitals. IIRC, it is a volunteer position, or if there is compensation it is just a token amount.

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This would be such a great idea I do not know why our area does not have something like this, the one time I was almost assigned a patient like this, I was lucky and a SANE nurse was on duty, it took her a consecutive three hours to complete the kit and the charting.

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Specializes in ER, PACU, ICU.

I worked as a SANE in a rural hospital and we had the only SANE program for our region. It is very tough to have round the clock coverage. At least my ER was somewhat flexible. I had scheduled shifts in the ER as a nurse but if some one came in that needed me as a SANE then I filled that role. If having to do an exam extended my shift I was able to come in later for my next shift.... if that makes sense. There were two of us that covered my hospital and third person training. We also took call opposite of our shifts and if I got called in for an exam I was able to start my shift later if I needed to sleep. Even with the flexibility in our shifts there was still times that things were left uncovered. It is hard to get nurses to fill the SANE role cause it can be exhausting. If for some reasons we were not able to change our shifts around depending on the state laws most say you can collect evidence and do a forensic exam up to 96 hours after the assault. The least desirable option was to have the person come back when one of us was on duty....and have them be treated medically if needed when they first presented to the ER... not the best option at all.

Of course there are always trainings offered nation wide (-:

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