West Central Alberta health-care workers are being surveyed as part of a research project looking into rural sexual assault medical care and what might be done to make the treatment of victims and the collection of evidence more effective and less traumatic.Cathy Carter-Snell, an instructor at Calgary's Mount Royal University and a sexual assault expert, is spearheading the project.She explained the project has been prompted, in part, by the findings of a recent survey conducted by the Alberta Association of Sexual Assault Workers that found that after sexual assaults women in rural areas often face issues that women in urban centres don't face.ìSome of those issues were being in a closed community, and being in close proximity to the person who assaulted them,î Carter-Snell told the Gazette. ìIf they go out of the rural area into the city (for treatment) they are separated from the support people that help them, such as family and friends. And that can all cause problems in their ability to cope afterwards.îNow rural health-care workers, including registered nurses, in hospitals between Red Deer and Calgary are being surveyed to find out what improvements staff would like to see when it comes to sexual assault treatment and evidence collection.ìWe are trying to find out what rural health-care workers would find helpful,î Carter-Snell said. ìWe are surveying the workers as to what their knowledge is of different aspects of sexual assault care. If more services were available what sort of things would they like to see?ìOne of the issues we see is that the small rural hospitals sometimes don't see sexual assault victims very often. They give very good emergency care in all situations, but there's special features of sexual assault care related to the evidence collection and what sort of questions to ask.ìThere are some very complicated instructions with the sexual assault evidence kits and if you only see a patient once every two years then it's going to take that much longer to read the 20-page instruction manual.îShe said while rural Alberta hospitals may typically see only one or two sexual assault cases per year, research indicates that only about one in three women who are sexually assaulted seek followup health-care treatment.ìThat means in sparsely populated areas that there may be many who do not come in for health care,î she said. ìReporting rates are lower in rural areas for many reasons including real or perceived lack of services, fear of stigmatization and blame and reluctance to leave community.îWith 40 to 50 per cent of sexual assault victims typically suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome, anything that can be done to reduce stress on the victim, including during follow-up medical care, would be helpful, she said.Researchers have already identified a number of areas where improvements might be made, including the introduction of cue cards to help expedite the use of the sexual assault evidence kits, she said.ìAnd another thing we could do is to set up a real-time access system with the Calgary Sexual Assault Response Team,î she said.The survey portion of the research project is expected to wrap up by the end of January.ìThen we will be analyzing the findings to make our priorities for the range of educational services we need to develop and in what format, whether it's an instruction video about the RCMP kit or flow charts or whatever they want to have,î she said. ìWe hope to have that ready by June.îRural practitioner Dr. Hal Irvine confirmed that the Sundre hospital typically sees one or two sexual assault cases per year.ìObtaining forensic evidence in sexual assault cases is tedious, and can take a couple of hours if one is not familiar with the procedure, but it is fairly straightforward,î he said.Although victims in this area sometimes go to Red Deer or Calgary for treatment, Irvine says he believes local treatment may be less stressful for the victim.ìI know the RCMP have at times transported victims to the city rather than bring them to Sundre Hospital ñ possibly because of expertise in the city (both medical and police) that may lead to better evidence collection and handling and result in more successful prosecution, as well as more organized support systems in the city for the victim,î he said.ìNevertheless, I believe that in most cases, it is better to treat and support victims in their home communities rather that expect them to have to travel, especially when suffering the stress of a sexual assault.î
