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Forensic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice Rita M. Hammer, Barbara Moynihan, and Elaine M. Pagliaro Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 2006, 900 pp., $99.95 (hardcover)
In his foreword to Forensic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice, U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who 10 years ago authored federal legislation that became the Violence against Women Act, suggests that the book brings together many of the field's most accomplished experts, serves as an invaluable resource for the entire forensic community, and helps shape a new generation of forensic nurses. Indeed the list of contributors is a cadre of 42 distinguished professionals with diverse knowledge, skills, experience, and background in nursing and forensic science. The book contains five parts and each part has three to seven chapters. Each chapter has a focus, key terms, content, discussion questions, and reference list sections.
The book opens with a strong foundation chapter by Virginia Lynch, wherein forensic nursing is described as the "application of the forensics aspects of health care combined with the bio/psycho/social/spiritual education of the registered nurse in the scientific investigation and treatment of trauma and/or death." Lynch superficially introduces the reader to a holistic theoretical framework in forensic nursing without explaining that holistic theoretical framework is rooted in General Systems Theory. A brief but succinct discussion of the principles in general systems theory that includes holism, gestalt, reverberation, negative entropy, permeable boundaries, equifmality, and so on, would have been helpful. In 1986, she initiated a proposal for the development of a forensic nursing specialty to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) and the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME). The proposed specialty became a reality when the University of Texas at Arlington school of nursing, department of graduate studies, implemented the first master's degree for forensic clinical nurse specialists (FCNS). The chapter thoroughly catalogs the historical perspectives of forensic nursing as a specialty.
Chapter 2 presents a rather weak and thin treatment of "Theoretical foundations for advanced practice forensic nursing." The chapter is actually devoid of a theoretical framework or structure that guides the forensic nurse in organizing practice. Instead, it introduces the reader to this kind of naïve and stereotypical statement: "the forum of medicine and forensic science is...