Forensic nursing education in North America: An exploratory study

The purpose of the study was to explore forensic nursing knowledge as a specialty area of study, and factors influencing educational development,as perceived by nurse educators who were instrumental in establishing some of the earliest forensic nursing courses or programs. This predominantly qualitative study involved interviewing a purposive sample of nurse educators from Canada and the United States. Data collection involved an email survey to collect demographic information about the educators and course statistics about the programs they created, in addition to a qualitative, semi-structured telephone interview. A thematic analysis and a constructivist worldview was utilized to analyze the data and comparisons were made to the relevant literature One result of this study was a definition of forensic nursing constructed from the data and compared to earlier definitions in the literature. A further differentiation of forensic nursing determined knowledge that was different from nursing in general, and different from other forensic disciplines, a distinction that has significance for interprofessional education.