Last week, we had a guest speaker that came in to talk to us about human trafficking. Prior to this discussion, I was not aware that human trafficking can be utilized as a manipulation tactic on people who have some form of relationship with their captor. Before this presentation, I was under the impression that human trafficking was when a person was kidnapped and forced to do something against their will. Although this may be true, there are many other situations in which victims are tricked into performing work for others. An example would be when your significant other asks you to do them a small favor by performing sexual acts on another person to “pay their debts.” If this task is performed, then the requests will continue and increase in severity until that relationship spirals into a captor-victim relationship. I personally find it horrifying that it could be easy to become trafficked if your captor uses the right manipulation tactics. Once you realize that you are in danger, it can be difficult to escape that captor due to their control over the situation.

One challenge that I have mentally faced since the presentation is figuring out how I should have conversations with patients who may potentially be in a trafficking situation. Each victim can react differently, and you have to be extremely careful with what you say, and how you say it. Any form of judgement can prevent your patient from putting trust in you. I feel most challenged by this, as I feel that communication is a large skill that needs improvement for me. I personally would like to learn more on how to begin conversations that are looking for information regarding a potential trafficking situation. I still feel rather unclear on how to go about transitioning into that conversation smoothly. I also feel that I would become nervous in the situation where I would speak to a patient and not know what to say, in the fear that I might say something that is triggering to them. If possible, I would like to learn more about the communication aspect of forensic nursing.

In my future practice as a registered nurse, I plan to utilize what to look for in a trafficking victim throughout my practice. In other words, I am going to holistically visualize my patients for any obvious signs. For example, you can tell a lot based off of looking at a patient’s skin. Patients who have been through human trafficking can experience many wounds that vary in the healing process. This could suggest that the patient is being harmed. They also could have tattoos that are out of the ordinary. For example, a bar code tattoo can generally be used as a form of branding on trafficking victims to show other captors that the victim has already been claimed. That does not mean that all abnormal tattoos are of a suspicious nature, but it is a good idea to initiate a conversation about the backstory of the tattoo. These are a couple examples of many indicators of trafficking. Overall, I plan to keep these examples in the back of my head for future reference, so that if I ever meet a patient that is in need to help, I can provide them with the current resources.