Forensic Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Ed.

This new edition is the premier resource by forensic nurses for forensic nurses. Working at the intersections of multiple health and legal systems, the forensic nurse practices nationally and globally,providing specialized nursing care and treatment, which focuses on those affected by violence and trauma, be they individuals, families, communities, or populations.

Continuing and building on over 20 years of collaboration with ANA, IAFN assembled a team of forensic nursing experts to revise the previous edition. The result: the most current and comprehensive delineation of the practice and professional performance common to and expected of forensic RNs and APRNs. Among the topics covered:

• Forensic nursing’s roles and practice domains, such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence, medicolegal death investigation, and psychiatric–mental health and correctional settings
• Educational preparation for forensic nursing
• Applying the nine provisions of the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements in practice
• The wide array of forensic nursing skills
• Trends and issues, including interprofessional education, the challenges of digital technologies, the accessibility of forensic nursing services, and forensic nursing research
• The global reach and international contexts of forensic nursing practice

Updated competencies lend specificity to the publication’s 19 standards statements. Each standard’s set of competencies can be evidence of compliance with that standard. As a whole, these competencies can frame the evaluation of practice outcomes and goals of forensic nurses and delineate what is expected of their practice by their healthcare peers and others. Its scope of practice—the what, how, where, when, who, and why of their practice—is the context for applying these standards.

Forensic Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition covers the full extent of forensic nursing practice at all levels and in all settings and roles. It is a must-have for both the practicing and aspiring forensic nurse and a useful resource for allied interprofessional practitioners and stakeholders.

About ANA's Specialty Nursing Standards

Since the late 1990s, ANA has partnered with other nursing organizations to establish a formal process for recognition of specialty areas of nursing practice. This includes the criteria for approving the specialty itself and the scope statement, and an acknowledgment by ANA of the standards of practice for that specialty.

Because of the significant changes in the evolving nursing and healthcare environments, ANA's approval of specialty nursing scope statements and its acknowledgment of specialty standards of practice remain valid for five years, starting from the publication date of the documents.

The standards and some of the scope of practice section in this publication are based on language and concepts from ANA's Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice, 3rd Edition, a helpful supplement to this specialty text. It is also of optimal use with two complementary ANA texts: Guide to Nursing's Social Policy Statement and Guide to the Code of Ethics for Nurses. Together, these three books help guide nursing practice, thinking, and decision-making. The set is proving useful as a professional reference, classroom textbook, in-service training guide, and credentialing exam resource.