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20 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com February 17–March 23, 2020 PROFILES IN NURSING by Nicole Smith B ridging the gap between health- care and the law, Virginia A. Lynch, RN, MSN, has been instrumental in founding the specialty of forensic nursing. Justice Denied Virginia Lynch was born on Jan. 27, 1941, in Weatherford, Texas. She earned her BSN from Texas Christian University in 1982. During an early clinical assignment, Lynch was exposed to the field of forensic science, which sparked her curiosity about interpersonal crime and how investiga- tions are conducted. After a visit to a crime lab, Lynch learned that many infractions of the law never make it to court due to loss of evi- dence — in part because healthcare work- ers often discard clothing and other items when setting out to help a patient. "When I asked the police if the person who abused, raped or killed these patients would be caught and punished, they told me it was unlikely because the doctors and nurses lost and destroyed the evidence," Lynch later recalled. "It had never occurred to me that the healthcare professions were unintentionally obstructing justice." Defining the Curriculum In 1984, Lynch served as a medicolegal death investigator for the Tarrant–Parker County Medical Examiner's District in Fort Worth, Texas. During this time, she began a rape crisis program and helped institute changes that would lead to the creation of a new nursing specialty designed to help victims by combining healthcare and the law. Lynch felt that nurses would be well- suited to such a role. "Nurses are highly skilled in the essential tools of identifying trauma and the recovery of specimens," she explained. However, before forensic nursing could become a specialty or even a training pro- gram, Lynch first needed to enlighten her colleagues about the nursing applications of forensic science and the importance of evidence collection. "Working with law enforcement, foren- sic pathologists and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences made me want to have a master's degree that would combine all of these fields that I had come to love — and it didn't exist," Lynch recalled. Lynch met with the graduate dean of The University of Texas at Arlington School of Nursing and designed her own independent study program. The program was accepted and became the first and, at the time, only master's degree in forensic nursing. (There are now other programs, but this discipline is still not a common offering at nursing schools.) In 1990, she completed an internship in death investigation at New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manhattan while finishing her MSN in forensic nursing. Her dissertation is still cited to this day. Lynch went on to become a coroner in the state of Georgia, which furthered her understanding of how nurses can assist in the field of forensics. She also became the founding president of a new professional organization, the International Association of Forensic Nurses (IAFN). She then began teaching, accepting a faculty position at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 1993. In this role, she coordinated a MSN program in forensic nursing as well as developing the first course in human rights for forensic nurses. Globally-Recognized Specialty The American Nurses Association recog- nized forensic nursing as a unique special- ty in 1995. In 2000, Lynch launched a glob- al outreach program in forensic nursing that combined teaching, consulting and social advocacy. She also cowrote and co- edited the first medicolegal textbook for nurses, Forensic Nursing, published by Elsevier in 2006. In that same year, Lynch was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, the first ever grant- ed in the field of forensic nursing, devel- oping a program through India's Punjabi University to bring forensic nursing prac- tice to health and justice systems across the Indian subcontinent. A Network of Forensic Nurses One of Lynch's ongoing objectives, in the words of Academy of Forensic Nurses Virginia A. Lynch, RN, MSN (1941–) She launched forensic nursing as a unique specialty "It never occurred to me that the healthcare professions were unintentionally obstructing justice."