Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi, guys, today, I want to introduce Her name is Lindsay Cotton and she is a sexual assault nurse examiner and medical legal death investigator. Did I get that correct?
You did?
Okay? Awesome? So I have a bunch of questions to ask you, obviously, but maybe it would be better if you just started by telling us a little bit about what you do for a living.
Okay, Well, first of all, I'm a registered nurse. I've got my VSN and I've been a nurse for about eleven years. I'm in Nurse practitioner school right now to further my education. My background primarily has been working in the emergency room, and during that time I became a Saint nurse, which is sexual assault nurse examiner, and what that means is I'm taking care of victims of sexual assault that present to the emergency room, and in that capacity,
I'm considered a forensic nurse. But within the last year and a half I've broad into that and the county that I live in created a forensic nurse position and I had to get my MDI, which is medical legal death investigator. Certification as well. So I'm under the umbrella of the District Attorney's office, and I work for the county, and I work with all of our law enforcement agencies,
and so I kind of wear two hats. So broadly speaking, the forendic nurse could mean a lot depending on where you live and work, but for me, it means I work both as a saying and an MDI.
Okay, this is so exciting for me to hear about this because well, as of right now, I don't think Philadelphia has a position like that, and I think it's cool that they're deciding to bring in other health professionals besides just doctors. So that's cool. So one of the questions I had for you was what education you needed for this job? And obviously you're already You're a bsn correct you said. Okay, So basically, if anybody was a nurse right now and they wanted to do this, they could.
They already have their degree. You have to just take an additional certification exam to be a saint that that's what you're saying.
So it depends on the state. Every state is different, and in my state you have to take a forty hour course to become a saane and they divide it up between adult and adolescent and pediatric, so you could do both, or you could just do one because some people don't like peds or some people love peds and
that's all they want to do. So I started out with that training and at the time, my hospital that I worked for paid for that, and from there you can become certified through your state and internationally for the NDI portion the death investigator. You don't have to be a nurse for that. They actually use a lot of it's cross training for law enforcement officers, so a lot of them will be cops and death investigators. And so that is also another forty hour course put on through
our state. And then you're appointed by your district attorney to be the medical legal death investigator. You're also appointed by the medical examiner, so it's a little bit more formal process, and then at that point you can work and the state that I live in, every county is totally different. I'm one of just a handful of urns that do this job. So I think it makes sense that a nurse or a medical person would work this job.
In terms of death investigation, there's so much complimentary knowledge that you have as a nurse and a death investigator that law enforcement just won't have. They'll look at it more from a criminal lens, whereas we're looking at it from a death lens or medical, like what caused this person to die? And so we just asked totally different questions. And I think that the trend should be that nurses get to do this job more and more than traditionally have.
I agree with you. I used to feel the same way because we as a pathology pathologists assistant students rotated through the m's office, but they didn't actually employ pathologists assistant and I thought that that was really interesting because all of the people that were forensic texts there were just high school educated and didn't really have any knowledge
of medicine. And I thought, how awesome it would be to have a medical person cutting the bodies and finding things along the way to help the doctors because they seem so overwhelmed with all the cases and everything. So, yeah, I totally with you. So one of the things there are questions I like to ask because this was a big thing when I went to PA School. When when I went to PA School, you graduate and you get a job and then there's no jobs, right because there's
not that many pas in the world compared to like nurses. Right, So are there a lot of opportunities for forensic nurses? Do you do you know if they're available or have you heard of jobs opening?
I I think the answer, unfortunately is no. In my state, it's so unique. The job that I have, I just happened to come across it and was the most qualified applicant. I really created the death investigation programs from nothing. Before me, there was a death investigator that again was more law enforcement trained, and so he just did things totally different, and I just saw a lot of opportunity to create
something new. So I think that if somebody's interested, they might have to just be entrepreneurial and very persistent with their EM's office or their DA's office and voice why they would be good at creating something like what I have here, And if anyone's interested in that, they could always reach out to me. I think you need a lot of support from various different agencies to do that. So if it doesn't already exist, you're going to have
to get creative. Somebody could apply for the Medical Examiner's office. Maybe to get their foot in the door. But I think as a saying nurse, that's the biggest area where you'd have the most opportunity to get started, because hopefully one day every single emergency department's going to have a sane program. We're nowhere near that at all right now. There's a lot of areas that don't have a forensically trained nurse to take care of them if they've been
sexually assaulted. But I mean, broadly speaking, the area of forensics is huge. Like, if you live in a metropolitan area and you're a forensic nurse and you have saying and MDI training, you could go into every single patient that might be a domestic violence victim, go in and do an assessment. You could do strangulation assessment, pediatric abuse assessment, I mean elderly abuse and neglect. I mean it literally
spans the lifespan. I've caught a lot of elderly neglect death cases where law enforcement thinks, oh, this person's old and they just died at home and it's nothing suspicious, and I review the scene photos and the report and I think, oh, hell no, this is this is suspicious, and we died into it, and we see they had, you know, coint court appointed caregiver, somebody that's legally responsible for them and they're doing their job and this person
died from hypothermia, for example. And we've had a couple of those kind of cases, and it's it's it's a huge area that has a lot of potential for growth, but we're not quite there yet.
That's that's really interesting. I think you're really onto something, and it makes me really excited to hear that you're kind of creating that. I really just from a person that was heavily involved with the Emmy's office, I see your position as a nurse being so valuable that I think you're onto something for sure. So I think that's really cool that you're I mean, it sucks that you have this job that is so dreamy that everybody can't just go get right, but but you're starting it. You're
starting a movement, and it's really cool. So I guess that was one of the questions I had for you when you were working in the er. You were just working as an er nurse, and then they would call you in for those specific cases because obviously you're not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs. And waiting for them to come in.
Right. Yeah, I've seen it done two different ways. You could either be an er nurse working your normal shift, and then if a sane patient comes in, you go one to one with that patient for a few hours, and another nurse picks up your patients and then you know with that you're not there's no perk in terms of extra pay, You're just you're already on shift. So you've just got a different patient load. But that's difficult because if the ear is busy and understaffed, which they
always are, always are, Yeah, that's gonna be hard. And so now a lot of hospital systems are moving towards a third party. So there are sane companies that train their sane nurses and provide twenty four to seven coverage. And that's what I do here. So I work for company and I cover two different counties and we all share twenty four to seven call. It's a very flexible work schedule and I choose when I want to work and it's it's either twelve or twenty four hour shifts.
And I'll just get a call from something called medical Messenger. They'll call and say, hey, there's a thirty six year old female at the certain hospital and they were assaulted, you know, two days ago. And then we go in and so we will go in and take over for that nurse as the forensic nurse and do our exam, make recommendations on medications, share that with the physician, and then the doctor will order whatever we decide we'll be
giving that patient. And then at that point our job is done, and then the ear nurse takes over to
medicate that patient and discharge. So we kind of work hand in hand, but it's a lot more I think time cost effective and time effective because sometimes you'll get two calls, you know, one after the other, and so I'll be at a hospital taking care of somebody and then there's another patient that's showed upwhere else, and so we'll have to decide can it wait until I'm done, or we just have a huge pool of nurses we can call from and say, hey, is anyone ready to pick this up?
Okay, that's cool. So when you go see these patients in the hospital, are you the one that's actually collecting the specimens from them?
Yeah?
And so what during your training you learn exactly, you know, what would you do take fingernail scrapings. Would you do that on a person that's live still.
Or yeah, so again, and that it depends on where you live. They'll have different expectations. But so for the state that I'm in, I can respond up to one hundred and twenty hours after someone's been assaulted. So that's five days. That is the number that we use to decide if we still have a chance of collecting forensic evidence. And I think nationwide that's pretty standard. So five days.
If somebody is sexually assaulted, they could come into the er say hey, I was sexually assaulted, and they may or may not want to report to law enforcement. Again, that's jurisdictional and it depends. It depends on the age and a whole bunch of other factors, but fits your average sexual assault patient. Then I would come in and
do a thorough interview. So I would be asking first of all, all the medical questions, like I want to know about their medical history just from a nursing perspective, the things that are important, And then I'll ask what they can remember happen to them. And I'm writing everything down, I'm using quotations, I'm being as objective as possible. And so there's a chart that we use. It's either paper or on the computer. It's about sixteen pages, so it's
long and it does take a couple of hours. But I'm just writing down everything they can remember, and that helps dictate the physical exam. If they remember certain things like I was pushed down, or I was held down by my wrists, or I was choked, those are areas where there might be potential DNA, and that will be where I swab with sterile Q tips. I will use an ultimate light source to look when it's dark with this particular light to see if there's body fluids that eliminate.
I will look at them literally had to toe and mark any kind of anything and you kind of bruise the area of pain abrasion. I will do a peltic exam and same thing. Document anywhere there's pain. If there's something that I see, like maybe a hair that doesn't match, or one time I saw literally dirt in somebody's vaginal wall,
I swapped that. And even if they don't remember anything, there's pretty much a standard process that all of us will use because if you think about a rape, there's likely going to be saliva or DNA transfer from aggressive handling on somebody's neck or breasts or wrists or thighs for example. So there's a lot of swabs that we get just no matter what, oral swabs for a DNA standard or there might be saliva or seen in there. We asked questions like when was the last time you
had consensual sex? Because maybe that somebody has a partner that they just had sex with four days ago and that was consensual, but two days ago they were raped, and so now there could be different DNA from two different people there, and that's important for the forensic lab to know.
Wow, this is so this is really interesting because I obviously I don't take care of live patients, so I just never I've always been curious about this stuff. So on average, and I know it probably varies from place to place, but I mean, how many of these types of sexual assaults do you see in a week or just on average?
Yeah, well, the area, it's it's so hard to say because I share call with about maybe twelve to fourteen other nurses, and so I only know what I see. I get called a couple of times a month, and that's when I see everybody. So I see ages zero to one hundred, I mean pedes, adolescents, adults. I'm trained for all of that, So definitely a handful of month. I don't know what our numbers are for last year.
That's a great question, and I'm curious. But I live in more of a rural area and so it's not going to be as high as like Portland, Oregon, for example, or me or something like that. So but of the ones that we see, I mean, it's just different every single time. You always learn something. When you're done. We do a lot of peer review and share things that are helpful to each other because you know it's hit
and miss or feast or famine. I always say, it's like you could go a couple of months without a call and then you start to feel rusty. So we do a lot of meetings with the team and share forensic photos that are important. And I mean, pediatrics is a whole other beast in terms of trying to do an exam like that on a toddler, for example, a baby, Like it's just it's so hard and then you're dealing with the parents and the emotions that come with that.
So yeah, that was one of my questions. I had for you. I was always able to disconnect from the pediatric autopsies at Children's Hospital, but when I went to the eme's office and saw abuse and kids getting killed by for even car accidents, it really kind of fucked me up. Yeah, so I was, But I know that there's people that are designed to fit every aspect of this world. That's what makes it great. Right. Do you
have what case would bring more emotion to you? Have you ever had any kind of emotion because you have to be in the room like the squared away one that's just that's doing your job and not get distracted by that stuff. But have have you ever had any cases that make you feel emotional or you think about all night when you go home or something like that.
Yeah, for sure, I do.
I mean, trust listen, I get it because I'm able to turn it off like and have no emotions most of the time. But yeah, I could recall a few cases that I was that you know, a baby that died on Christmas Eve or something, you know, just like things like that that I go home and it stays in my mind when normally I'm pretty desensitized to it. I get that you have to disconnect for your job.
I know I do have some that come to mind, for sure, and I think I compartmentalized pretty well, but you just can't help some of those that stick in your mind that are just like extra horrifically sad and unnecessary. And I think that the ones that are the worst are the ones where there's just obvious signs of abuse and neglect combined with the sexual abuse, because it's just all the things that are so terrible for this kid.
Yeah, it's so it just sucks that we live in a world like this. You just don't want to think that anybody would, especially a child. It's just yeah, so gross. But how did you So you did you start off school like you did RN and BSN. You've gone through this whole thing. So you were an RN and were even a BSM prior to even taking the certification for sane.
Yeah, it was a BSN right from the start. So when I first said nurse, I just got my four year out of the way and then went into the er and then my second year as nursing as when I became a sane. So I've done it for a long time.
So you've based you've always been an R nurse that's all you ever like what I guess the question I'm getting at is how did you know that this was because you seem like this is a good fit for you. You're very you're you're very into it and you're gonna make changes in the field, and I love that. So how did you know that that's something that was going to be your, like your thing?
Yeah, I I wouldn't say I was interested in forensics Initially. I always knew I wanted to do the er because I thought the adrenaline is great. It totally suits me. I'm cool, calm, and collected ninety nine percent of the time, and it just it was also an area where I like taking care of people, but I don't want to take care of them for days and days and days. I like when they come in and then they leave.
Yeah, that's that's good, right.
And the same thing came about just because we didn't have that coverage in our county and so our manager asked everybody, Hey, does anybody want to do this? And I volunteered. So I think three or four of us went and got trained at And at first I thought that was like just a lot, because I'd never had I don't think I'd had any sane patients at that point. And the training is just incredibly heavy. It is so sad,
and and it just has to be that way. There's no other way to get somebody prepared to appropriately take care of a rape victim than case studies and pictures and examples of like the worst of the worst. So it was definitely eye opening. But then once you start taking care of your first couple of patients, I was just I loved it. I was I was like, I felt like I did a good job because I was able to empathize but also be objective and just take
good care of them. And I know that also most people say I could never do that, and those are the people I don't want taking care of those patients. It's got to be the select few that are meant to do that kind of work. And there's a lot of times where we'll get nurses totally trained up and it's deer in headlights for them, and they do a couple of exams just shadowing, and they'll say, I can't do this, And to me, that's no big loss, because you don't. If you think you can't do it, then
you can't do it. And I don't want you taking care of patients like that when they're going to be so vulnerable and emotional and maybe altered. I mean, you just have to be the best you can to take care of them in that moment, because you're also going to have other healthcare providers, doctors, law enforcement that are
going to have an attitude towards people like this. And I see it still more than i'd like to, where somebody has an attitude like, well, if she wasn't so drunk, maybe that wouldn't have happened, you know, or whatever she was wearing like that wouldn't have happened, or it's suggestive or something, and that's just that's bullshit. So if anybody has that kind of attitude towards somebody like that, then screw that and they shouldn't be taking care of patients at all.
Yeah, that's true, because there's actually a case, I don't know, I'm sure you've heard of it, that there was an LSU student that was raped by two I think it was two fellow college students and then she got out of they let her out of the car on the street, and then a car drove by and like killed her.
I don't know if it just happened recently, but yeah, the defense team is obviously trying to say that she was drunk, and they have proof that she you know, it just it really pisses me off, and from a mother's perspective of sending your kid away to college. But in a case like that, for example, because you're talking about a lot like taking care of live people and stuff, but case like that, would you be involved with collecting specimens for the autopsy too, or you only deal with live people.
No, I could totally do it on a decedent. But I had a case a while back where it was somebody that committed to a side a female, a young female. And you know, suicide's a hard concept for people to grasp, and especially family to understand why somebody does that. And I got a call from a family member begging me to do a saane exam on her daughter just because she thought, well, maybe she was raped and that's why
she killed herself, and she just didn't. She was looking for a reason, and I get that, But what it came down to is there was no no anything to lead us to believe that she was sexually assaulted or touched or anything. There was just history there and it wasn't enough for us to be able to do a sane exam. But it brought up the question, and so I started asking other death investigators around me and even our state medical examiner, do you ever do sain kits
on someone's that's deceased. And the collective answer was pretty much no. I mean, because as soon as somebody dies, their tissues are deteriorating and things are changing, you're going to lose evidence if the body's then moved and put into a body bag and transported. I mean, there's just so many factors that come into play when somebody's dead that it would be difficult to do a proper scene exam. And also just manipulating the tissues. I mean, you know
what a body feels like when they're dead. It would be really hard. And I was told also that using those que tits to collect evidence on tissue where the person is dead, you're just going to get a lot of that other gunk on there that's not It would be hard for the Friends of Glad to do whatever it is that they do, So I just in my experience, it's not been done, and our emmy made it sound like it would be very unlikely to happen. But Okay, that's just my experience.
Yeah, I understand that. So but if there was a they did an autopsy on someone and there were clear signs of sexual assault, then they then in those cases they would do that obviously.
Yeah, and we do have kits available in the works, so they must be there for a reason. But yeah, I don't see why you couldn't just do some some swabs and see what you get. It wouldn't bear.
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So check it out. You can go to thedorramatter dot com slash book and find where you can get this great book. Getting back to so, you were saying that when you were working in the er that you would just get paid the same salary because you were already on shift. But do you know anything This is kind of a personal question. I'm not trying to ask you, like how much you make, but I'm just asking for
people that may be interested in the field. Do you get paid, like on average, the same as you would if you were just still working in the er or do you as because I feel like the more specialized you are, the more you should get paid personally, But I don't know if that's true in your field.
Yeah, it's I would say it's not. Of the different companies I've worked for, a lot of them are nonprofits and so that they don't have a lot of money to give, and so you know, the perks would be they'd pay for your training and your education and your recertification and things like that. But when you're doing the job.
In my experience, it's been I'll get paid like five dollars an hour to be on call, so five dollars times however many hours I won't call, and then if I get called in, I would get a lump sum based on if it's day shift or night shift, and I might get a differential on the holidays, or a different rate if it's pediatrics versus adult. So there's a couple of variables there, and it's not big money at all.
I think that one hundred percent of the nurses, this is all their second job, and so it's extra income. It's not benefited. It's not like you get any perks. It's just it's just going to be some extra money for you. But you know, for everybody that loves it, it's totally worth it. And I've worked for different companies that have paid drastically different and it's nice when you get paid more, but I still will do it even getting paid less, because it's important and I love it.
And then it can lead to other things, like it led to the death investigation job that I have.
Yeah, and I find that just in general. I remember when I rotated at the Emmy's office. I really wanted to do autopsies there as a job, and they said they would hire me, but they basically were like, you're getting paid, like we pay the text like it was
something really. I mean this was back in two thousand and seven, but they were getting paid like thirty twenty eight or thirty thousand dollars a year with the exception of like being able to work overtime and get more, but then basically working forty hours, you know, or eighty hours a week to get to get a normal like salary, I think, and in forensics in jail, I mean this, I only have experience with Philadelphia, so but I think that it seems like they don't really because it's a
government job kind of, so they don't pay, they don't have money, and it's unfortunate because when you're talking, I think about how important your job is it, but that doesn't always that doesn't always equal like what you would get paid to do something like that. But obviously you do it because you you know, people do it because they love it and that's that's cool. Have you you were? So what's what is the follow through with your cases?
So?
For example, if you work on someone, do you get do you find out like what happened, if any of the evidence you collected yielded something, if there was any kind of prosecution or anything in regards to your particular cases.
Yeah, so if you're proactive, you might be able to find that out. Every county should have something like a start which a sexual assault Response team or NDT, A multidisciplinary team, and that might be quarterly where you have all different key players like the district attorney or prosecuting attorneys, law enforcement detectives, the SAANE nurses, the advocacy center staff get together quarterly, for example, and meet and discuss cases
that have happened in that past past quarter. So you if you go to those and participate, then yeah, you might find that out because because they would have that information. But also cases that go to court and are prosecuted, then you would likely be subpoanut and so then you would definitely find out what happened. So there are times when you will, but there's a lot of times when you'll just never see or hear from them again.
Okay, that was That was Actually another question I had for you was you have to go to court, so there is a chance that you would have to go to court on some cases. Yeah, oh my god, have you ever have you ever gone to court yet? Or no?
Yeah, I have a couple of times. It's always you always get nervous because you know your chart's up there and by dissecting every single thing you said, and you're noticing, God, my handwriting is terrible, or spell that I look like an idiot, and they just really hammer you big time about you know, why are you so qualified to be there to do that job? And it makes you kind of second guess yourself, or at least the defense tries
to do that. But yeah, it's happened, and usually people don't get much time, but sometimes they do or it could be a third strike offense and they get life in prison, and that always feels really good.
Yeah, that's I went to court once with the Emmy, well a couple of times actually, and those defense attorneys were just giving it to them, you know, they were really trying to screw them up, and it just was it was really it was a cool experience for me because I was just kind of in the audience watching like a real life law and order situation. But for them, I thought like, oh my god, that would strust me out so bad.
Yeah, it's not fun, but you also just have to realize it's part of your job and you're just being honest and speaking to what happened in that moment. And the biggest thing is you just have to document everything, you know, just don't leave any room for interpretation.
Yeah, and always just think this is going to court so someone else is going to be in this chart or whatever.
Every single time, and yeah, assume every chart is going to go to court.
Yeah. Also, so I saw that you have an Instagram account that's at forensic dot nurse correct h that it's cool. I checked it out. I hope that a bunch of our people will start following you. You can get more followers and kind of spread the word about that. Trust me, so many nurses, so so many nurses say they would they want to know if they could do my job, and it would really be a pain in the ass for you to become a PA after you're a nurse
because you have to go to school all over again. Yeah, and this is I think it's more interesting than my job.
Well, yeah it is.
And on.
There's just a lot of opportunities for growth, so people can make it what it it needs to be in the community that they live in. But you just don't usually have that knowledge that this even exists. So I think I don't have that many followers, but of the ones that I do, I've just had genuine interest from people that are pre nursing or nursing students or they've been nurses for a long time. And they just messaged
me and asked, how do I get into this? It's exactly what I want to do, and the other to answer a question you had earlier. Another reason I fell into this was because I have always had an interest in law enforcement. I've always thought being a detective would be a fascinating and satisfying and I've also just really kind of come to love the world of helping victims of sex trafficking or human trafficking, and so I've learned
a lot about that through my saying training. And I before I became a forensic nurse, like as the death investigator, I was so burned out with nursing. I had done it long enough that I was bitter and hated going to work every day, and I wanted a career change, and so I looked into becoming a police officer. And so I did all the testing that was needed and interviews and things like that, and I made it to the chiefs interview of the agency that I wanted to
work for. But that was like January of twenty and then COVID kicked off, and so they ended up switching their hiring to just lateral transfers instead of new officers, So that kind of derailed me at that time, but ultimately it led me to this jobs though it worked out in the end. But I just have always had that love of the law enforcement side and criminal shenanigans
that happened. Just it aligns with being an er nurse or even a nurse in general, where you just have that dark, sarcastic, extensive humor and it meshes very well.
Yeah, it's so cool. It's like so exciting to meet you and talk to you about this because I've always wondered. I've heard that there's forensic nurses, but I don't. I'm not a nurse, and so many people that are in the gross room are so this this is going to be so interesting for them to hear. I guess that's all I have. Really, that's all I had to ask. Do you have anything that I completely didn't think of?
Or oh, I don't think so. I mean, I think we hit all the high points as far as addressing if somebody is interested, what they could do, you know, locally to kind of look into it. Just just ask questions in job shadow, I think that's my biggest piece of advice, is to seek out the information that you're wanting and if there's somebody that you know that has a job you're interested in, see if you can shadow them and interview them yourself.
So what are the rules as far as that goes? Because things have changed a lot obviously over since I started to Like I used to be able to have college students that just wanted to see an autopsy that might be interested in pathology to come and now you know, fast forward, it's a hippa. We don't want anyone in the autopsy room that's not supposed to be in there. You know, they get a little crazy with that. So let's say a nursing a nurse or a nursing student
wanted to shadow you. I mean they can't really go on a real call with you, right or how does that work?
That would probably just be a case by case basis. I think if it was your run of the mill death scene that I went to, it might be allowed. I would have to clear it with the people that I work for. But if it's something potentially criminal, then yeah, we usually don't let anybody come in and participate in anyway because I mean, you might be subpoena to yourself if you're there and so, but it also depends on your medical examiner, like mine is very open to teaching
and having people watch. So I have invited some of the people that are interested to come shadow and autopsy because I do assist with those as well, and I've had a nurse shadow me for some of the things that I do. Sometimes we'll just sit down and talk about it, just because it's natural to have questions, like the things that you're asking are the things that other people ask, And nurses will say, how do you get blood from a dead person? Like I can't even figure
that out? And then I tell them and I show them and it's mind blowing because it's just completely different than working with a live person.
Yeah, I think shadow I always say that too because on so for our fields, for a pathologists assistant, it's like, you, really, there's not really many things you could do. You could work in surgical pathology or autopsy, but like that's it. So if you don't like it, you're stuck with it, basically. And so many of my classmates and students that have gone through the program haven't shadowed someone prior and they
don't even know. Like even my classmates had no idea what the job was going to be when they graduated, and I was already working at the hospital, so I would bring them in and be like, hey, this is where you're going to work all the time, and you know, show them and stuff. But it makes no sense to sign up for that huge tuition bill and go through all that hard college and then not really know that you want to do something, you know what I mean.
Oh yeah, that's how I felt about nursing, and I just fell into it and I didn't know what else I wanted to do when I was nineteen, and I just have been persistent and made it something that I do enjoy and I'm grateful that it pays the bills and provides job security, but I've never loved it. But the job that I have now I love. So it took a while, but I.
Could tell that you love it. That's it all worked out good. But you look like you're like around my age, right, So it was when we were younger and getting ready to go to school, that's what you did. You were a nurse's Yeah, they were like, you're going to be a nurse, and that's what girls did, right, And now it's that's why I love your profession, because I think you're gonna like you said something that I've heard myself say,
which is nobody knew this existed. And that's what got me to start my Instagram because I was like, nobody in the world knows how cool this stuff is that's going on behind the scenes. So I think you're going to be an innervative person in this field, and it just makes me really excited that I got to talk to you.
Yeah, this has been great, and so.
Yeah, guys, just follow her on Instagram at forensic dot nurse and I'll also get some information off of her to put on this post as far as like additional resources that you could or if you even want to give out your information because you might get a flood of people and asking you questions.
Yeah. The other thing I'll just say real fast is that I asked n International Association of Forensic Nurses is like the certification you'd have to have so you can be a member and you'd get newsletters and information you can get certified through them, and all kinds of trainings that are free or for a small cost, and then they have annual oh gosh, what do they call that when you meet every year conference. But yeah, conferences, and I went last year in Dallas and it was a blast.
It's so much information. So if you even think you're interested in forensics, just join the IFN and then they have tons of information as well.
Could nurses go to that conference that aren't saying, like, could any nurse go to that conference just to see if they would be interested in that world? Yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah, you would just pay a little more being a non member, but I mean, just do it, and a lot of hospitals would probably pay for that if they think that that might be something that they're wanting, is to provide saying coverage, then you could use that as a way to kind of get your foot in the door and get trained that way.
Okay, all right, well thank you so much, Linda. It was awesome meeting you. It was well, thank you all right, thanks, thank you for listening to mother nos death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a master's level education and specialized in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, My website and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
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