Vicarious Trauma Among Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners

Cara Berg Raunick · Deborah F. Lindell · Diana Lynn Morris · Theresa Backman

62 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Forensic Nursing

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Child Abuse and Trauma Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies

Abstract

Vicarious trauma (VT), the phenomenon of changes in cognition and worldview that result from empathic response and repeated exposure to narratives of trauma, is a risk for helping professionals. This descriptive, correlational study sought to examine levels of VT among sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs) as compared with other women's health nurses. It also explored whether levels of VT are different for nurses who have experienced primary trauma alone, VT alone, or both personal trauma and VT. VT was assessed through an anonymous online survey using the nurses' total scores on the Trauma and Attachment Belief Scale. Trauma and Attachment Belief Scale scores were significantly higher for SANEs (M = 178.5, SD = 42.6) than for women's health nurses (M = 168.1, SD = 41.4; p = 0.025), indicating higher levels of trauma-related cognitive disruption in the SANE group. Scores were also significantly higher for both groups with personal trauma histories at the p < 0.05 level compared with the women's health nurses with no personal history. SANEs who had no personal history of trauma did not differ significantly from either group of nurses who did, suggesting that VT from working as an SANE is associated with levels of cognitive disruption similar to oneself having experienced trauma. Nurses should be aware of this phenomenon and its sequelae when choosing to pursue the specialty of sexual assault nursing. Hospitals and other organizations employing SANEs should also be aware of VT and provide a support system with resources in place to mitigate these effects. Future research should further explore effects of primary trauma versus VT, clinical manifestations and significance of varying levels of VT, and interventions and strategies for dealing with VT.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 62 citations exist upstream.

References

1990Vicarious traumatization: A framework for understanding the psychological effects of working with victims 1995Vicarious traumatization: An empirical study of the effects of trauma work on trauma therapists.1990Psychological trauma and the adult survivor: Theory, therapy, and transformation.1998Exploring Thriving in the Context of Clinical Trauma Theory: Constructivist Self Development Theory 2006Vicarious traumatisation in telephone counsellors: internal and external influences 2009Vicarious traumatisation in practitioners who work with adult survivors of sexual violence and child sexual abuse: Literature review and directions for future research

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.