Nursing program seeking examiner applicants
By David Gomez Jr.
Editor-in-chief
Published Monday, Sept. 21, 2020
The Advanced Nursing Examiners Sexual Assault Nursing Examiner program at TAMIU seeks applicants to continually certify local nurses.
Texas A&M International University’s ANE-SANE program expects to select 18 applicants, who will be taught and certified as examiners for sexual assault cases.
“We are aiming to certify 18 more nurses to become sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE) this year,” program manager Rosario Benavides emailed The Bridge.
This program is expected to help in an area that only includes 20 certified sexual assault examiners in all of Laredo and its surrounding areas.
“The availability of SANE-trained nurses in our health care facilities in Laredo will allow for prompt forensic examination and forensic care to sexually assaulted victims,” emailed Benavides. “This will also help prosecution seek justice for the victims.”
Associate Professor Marivic Torregosa, in the TAMIU news bulletin, noted that the program seeks to address Laredo’s chronic shortage of available SANE-certified examiners.
It is a three-step process that starts by application, basic SANE training and, once done with it, they continue to advanced SANE training where they will then train in acute care facilities. The last process before being certified requires supervision by a preceptor so they may oversee the trainee performing forensic examinations.
TAMIU, being part of a city with a population greater than 200,000 residents, establishes itself as the closest source of educated applicants through a program of this caliber. This should benefit the city and its registered nurses and nurse practitioners.
“The TAMIU-SANE Program is not an academic program but a programmatic grant,” emailed Benavides, “because there [was] no call for proposals released by HRSA or other state and federal funding agencies in the past. There were no competitive proposals submitted on this area or topic.”
For the past year, the ANE-SANE program has given TAMIU, and the city, newly certified nurses by chance.
“It was just so timely that in 2018, HRSA issued a call for proposal; the College of Nursing and Health Sciences submitted a grant application and was competitively selected,” Benavides emailed. “TAMIU College of Nursing and Health Sciences is one of the few institutions that received funding in the entire nation.”
The deadline for applicants to be eligible for the program was Friday, Sept. 18. Interested persons may contact Rosa Benavides for additional information or questions via email: maria.benavides@tamiu.edu.
