Janet Matheson
For caring for sexual assault survivors, and defending the nurses who treat them
Youre seeing people on the worst day of their life. You want to be everything for that personmedically, emotionally, socially. Thats how ER nurse Janet Matheson describes her mission as a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE). So she was surprised when New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs disparaged SANE nurses for their lack of compassion.”In August, a woman went to Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton after being sexually assaulted. No SANE nurse was on call that nightat the time, there were five in the city, and between them Matheson estimates that they provided 90 percent of round-the-clock coverage. The patient says she was told to return the next morning when a nurse could examine her.While Matheson was eventually called to perform the exam, the patient was understandably distraught and went public with her story. The premier and the provincial health authority were quick to blame the service. Their comments were a slap in the face to Matheson, whos been with the hospitals SANE program since its inception. No one felt worse than we did, says Matheson.But, as she wrote in a Facebook post, what happened was the fault of a system failing under its own weight because of the governments inability to fix it. In other words, the nursing crisis. There are about 1,000 vacant nursing jobs in the province, and after Higgss comments, four New Brunswick SANE practitioners resigned. But Matheson, who has worked as a nurse for 45 years, is optimistic. I hope some good will come out of this and the SANE program will flourish. Caitlin Walsh Miller