Survivor shocked, saddened by Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program staffing challenges – Winnipeg | 24CA News
A sexual assault survivor who acquired care at Health Sciences Centre’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program is shocked and saddened to see its staffing challenges unfold.
Seven informal nurses with this system stop this week after working by means of long-standing shortages that compelled some sufferers to return later for examination and therapy.
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Shared Health to place backup plan in place for sexual assault program whereas alternative nurses prepare
Aside from amassing proof, this Winnipeg girl says SANE gave her the assist she wanted at a vital second in her life. Without it, she says she may have fallen by means of the cracks.
“The nurses and the people that supported me in the SANE program on that day were pivotal, and I think when I look back at my life, it was a moment that I could have sort of stumbled.”
Global News isn’t figuring out her as a result of she’s a sufferer of sexual assault. She says she was referred to SANE in 2017.
“The most poignant memory that I have from the day is when they, the triage nurse at HSC asked me, ‘Who’s your emergency contact?’” she stated.
“I have a lot of family and a lot of friends and a really healthy social network, and I didn’t feel like there was anyone I could tell or that there was anyone that I would want to be called, so I said I didn’t have one, and so I was very alone, and they took really good care of me.”
SANE’s certified nursing shortages are deeply regarding to her, she stated.
“For them to walk off the job, something has to be really, really wrong, and I feel like I owe it to them to speak up about the good work that they were doing.”
She worries how the place reclassifications and vacancies will influence survivors in search of care.
“This is all just putting women and girls like just lower, lower, lower on the priority list.”
In an announcement timed to mark Sexual Assault Awareness Month final April, Manitoba Health Minister Audrey Gordon introduced $640,000 in funding to rent 5 full-time forensic nurse examiners, together with a provincial co-ordinator.
“We recognize that it is difficult for anyone who has undergone a trauma of this nature, and our government takes this very seriously,” a spokesperson from the minister’s workplace stated in an announcement Friday.
Shared Health stated Thursday medical doctors and nurse practitioners had been serving to the remaining SANE nurses cowl shifts for the foreseeable future till new hires are skilled.
“The classification of these positions as Nurse 2s [from Nurse 3s] is consistent with the classification of nurses who have been providing this service for years as members of the casual workforce,” a spokesperson stated in an announcement Friday.
People who’ve skilled intimate associate violence or sexual assault ought to nonetheless search care, the spokesperson stated.
In the meantime, the survivor with whom Global News spoke stated she’s grateful for a program she believes must be out there to everybody.
“I think about how those nurses held me and cared for me and were like my bridge between, you know, an assault and a life and a life that I love that I’m able to have because of their support.”
— with information from Global’s Shane Gibson
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
