Introduction
“Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you’re put on Earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes a spiritual calling,” said by the infamous Vincent Van Gogh. When a person decides to go into the field of nursing it gives them so many more opportunities than being a “floor” nurse all of their life. Working as a floor nurse can be exhausting. One particular field of nursing to look into would be forensic nursing; it deals with healthcare providers working with the law enforcement to collect evidence, teach risk reduction strategies, identify injuries and their causes, and testifying in court to apply what they find to public and legal proceedings (Master of Science in Nursing,
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It was only a matter of time before someone decided to give what nurses were doing a name. Along came Virginia A. Lynch, the mother or forensic nursing, who began visiting a crime laboratory, in 1982, only to be inspired by what she saw. Her pattern of visits ultimately became a brand new nursing specialty, termed forensic nursing. Virginia Lynch began to notice that evidence was being tampered with, unintentionally (Waszak, 2013). Certain items, clothing, specimens, and personal items were often lost leading to the unlikely hood of rapist, murderers, or abusers being convicted (Waszak, 2013). Virginia Lynch was an educator of forensic nursing long before it was considered a specialty (Waszak, 2013). Lynch believes that nurses are essentially the best people for forensics because they must pay close attention to detail. She was just formally educating nurses on the jobs they were already expected to perform (Stokowski, 2008). An organization was formed, in 1992, named International Association of Forensic Nursing with Virginia Lynch as founding president (Stokowski,