Lisa Zhu | Better caring for rape victims

Hypothetical scenario: You wake up after a night of partying, naked in a stranger's bed. You gaze around the room with horror when you're hit with a flash of recollection - vaguely, you remember taking multiple shots, staggering away from the party, making out, struggling to say no, feeling too drunk to fight back.

A blur of decisions follow thereafter, each of them difficult - a call to the Division of Public Safety Special Services, the trip to the hospital, dozens of retellings to doctors, counselors, police officers and lawyers.

The aftermath of sexual assault is terrifying. Sharing one of the most invasive, traumatic experiences a human being can undergo is nothing short of impossible. And for those who choose to report the crime and undergo an examination, it's absolutely essential that properly trained SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) nurses are there to care for the patient's overall wellbeing and collect the necessary forensic evidence to bring the assailants to justice.

That's why it's extremely unfortunate that the City of Philadelphia hasn't been able to allocate enough funding to provide the adequate level of care available for victims at hospitals. Currently, the only two hospitals in Philadelphia that serve victims of sexual assault are Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the Episcopal Hospital at Temple University.

Although both facilities strive to provide the highest level of care for survivors, the examination process can be painfully long for patients whose mental health could be severely at risk.

"There's no typical wait time, it depends on the circumstances," said Lieutenant Michael Boyle of the Philadelphia Police Department Special Victims Unit. "I would say that more than an hour wait would not be unusual."

The length of the wait depends upon the availability of SANE nurses that are on call at any particular moment. But the current severe shortage of SANE nurses in Philadelphia sometimes compromises the hospital's ability to consistently provide timely service for sexual assault victims.

"At one point we had 12 SANE nurses that worked in the emergency room," said Patricia Roussel, program director of Sexual Assault at Episcopal. "Now we're down to four here."

Roussel attributes the shortage to the frustration SANE nurses can experience when working in many emotionally taxing situations. "Unless you have a large number [of nurses] to share the wealth, it's easy for SANE nurses to get burnt out because a lot of these cases are very tragic."

However, Philadelphia could mitigate higher turnover rates for sexual-assault nurses by providing more incentives for nurses to receive training in the field. Currently, the cost of employing a SANE nurse is extremely high relative to other nurses.

"It's expensive because you have to pay a nurse for her training, you have to pay for her to be on call at the ER, you have to pay if she goes to court as a witness," Roussel said. And because governments don't fund nurses to receive SANE training, hospitals must be willing to shoulder the burden on their own.

The practice of forcing hospitals to pay for their nurses' SANE training is almost as bad as the discovery that women had to pay for their own rape kit examinations during Sarah Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla. In both cases, governments are shirking their responsibilities to prevent crime and apprehend suspects.

In spite of this shortcoming by legislators, the hospital staff at Episcopal and Jefferson have done an admiral job of collaborating with other groups. Along with the Philadelphia Police and nonprofit organizations such as Women Organized Against Rape, the hospitals have formed the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Advisory Council.

In the coalition's regular meetings, several innovative ideas have been brought up to ameliorate the shortage of SANE nurses, such as creating a team of mobile SANE nurses that could travel directly to victims.

But it's not enough for these ideas to come only from the nurses at Episcopal and Jefferson. It's about time the City of Philadelphia steps up to take responsibility in providing adequate care for victims of sexual assault and finding evidence to prosecute rapists.

Lisa Zhu is a Wharton and College senior from Cherry Hill, N.J., and United Minorities Council chairwoman. Her e-mail is zhu@dailypennsylvanian.com. Zhu-ology appears every Thursday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.