Establishing a community-academic nursing partnership to lead a healthcare response during a human trafficking extraction operation.

Abstract

A community-academic nursing partnership formed to care for the urgent healthcare needs of individuals extracted from human trafficking during a multidisciplinary team operation. During past human trafficking extraction operations, law enforcement and the state sexual assault nurse examiner coordinator recognized the need to meet the patients' immediate physical and emotional needs while providing essential comfort to the newly extracted individuals. To meet the immediate holistic healthcare needs during the recovery operation, the nursing faculty partnered with a local nonprofit community clinic to provide onsite trauma-informed, patient-centered healthcare and comfort items. The healthcare team consisted of advanced practice nurses, mental health nurses who triaged the patient's immediate psychological needs, sexual assault nurses who collected forensic specimens, and nurses with expertise in substance use disorder who evaluated the patient's treatment needs. The patient's physical comfort was met by providing hygiene kits, blankets, socks, food, and drinks. Trauma-informed language was utilized to help the patient feel safe and to convey respect for the patient's autonomy in making decisions during the extraction process. The innovative community-academic nursing partnership laid the groundwork for providing healthcare to future human trafficking extraction operations with plans to incorporate nursing students and graduate nursing students to increase the number of patients served while providing a rich learning experience to the students.