Levels of Knowledge of Emergency Nurses Regarding Forensic Cases and Approaches to Evidence

Background: This descriptive research was conducted to determine the level of knowledge of nurses working in emergency services regarding their approach to forensic cases and evidence. Method: The universe was nurses working in the emergency services of state and university hospitals located within the borders of a province. The study group consisted of 175 nurses who agreed to partici-pate and were working in the emergency departments of 15 hospitals (14 state hospitals and one university hospital).The data were collected with a question-naire developed with reference to the literature to determine the characteristics of the nurses and their approaches to forensic cases and evidence. The data were evaluated using mean, frequency, percentage distributions, t test and ANOVA in the SPSS 21.0 program. Results: From the research, it was concluded that nurses had knowledge deficiencies in the identification and reporting of forensic cases, identification of forensic evidence, and collection, storage and delivery of evidence to the competent authorities. The proposition to which most respon-dents gave the correct answer was ‘Evidence should be placed in a separate paper package/envelope’ (99.4%), and the most incorrect was ‘When taking the story, the questions should be distracting to reveal inconsistencies (6.3%)’. 57.1% re-sponded correctly to the propositions. Conclusion: Nurses working in emer-gency departments have a low level of knowledge about approaches to forensic cases and evidence.

Forensic nursing, Emergency nursing, Health services research, Knowledge

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