by Kim Merrikin
For the last four years, we’ve had the privilege of working with a group of Seattle Pacific University (SPU) senior nursing students to create resources for survivors of sexual exploitation and the healthcare providers who serve them. Mihkai Wickline, a longtime friend of REST and nurse, leads the student groups.
For the past four spring quarters, REST has been a clinical site for a small team of SPU senior nursing students to implement their Service Learning Project. The students are tasked with creating an evidence-based, sustainable intervention of REST’s choosing. The students learn about the target population and then refine their group skills as they engage stakeholders, follow a ten-week timeline, develop their project, and then hand it off to REST with implementation and evaluation plans. REST has been an amazing partner for SPU. Students carry forward the principles of trauma-informed, non-judgmental care into their practice and truly become ambassadors for how health care must change for people affected by the sex trade.
- Mihkai Wickline MN, RN, AOCN, BMTCN, Clinical Adjunct Faculty, SPU
It started in 2017 with an Infection Control Plan for our seven-bed emergency shelter that had opened just a few months earlier.
In 2018, the next group of students collaborated with survivors to create the booklet “Caring for your health while in the sex trade”—a resource to help individuals who are engaged in the sex trade to take care of their bodies. The sex trade can be physically taxing—and sometimes poor medical advice is promoted. We wanted to offer non-judgemental information that answers several of our clients’ questions.
In 2019, a new group of SPU Nursing students, recognizing that many healthcare providers are unequipped to care well for sex trade survivors, created the first version of our Healthcare Provider Toolkit (HCP Toolkit) and a brochure for people who have experienced the sex trade to bring to their appointments, helping their provider understand their needs, without needing to verbalize them directly to the provider.
REST's clients have shared with us their experiences accessing health care services for more than a decade. There have been some positive encounters and countless cringe-worthy ones. This document, created in partnership with SPU nursing students, shares tools, best practices, and insight to allow every health care provider to provide trauma-informed care to patients who have experienced the sex trade.
- Audrey Baedke, REST Programs Manager
This year, the students furthered the work on the HCP Toolkit and created the content for a poster for healthcare settings to educate and remind providers how to provide trauma-informed care to survivors of sexual exploitation. They also researched and added to the HCP Toolkit a section on gender and sexual minorities (GSM), an often overlooked and under-cared-for group of people who are disproportionately impacted by the sex trade.
Working with the GSM community has been one of the most impactful parts of my job here at REST as the Community Advocate for All Genders. Our cultural values emanate unconditional positive regard and care, and with this chapter in the toolkit, we are able to express our values in tangible and practical ways. In partnership with SPU Nursing, we were able to assess community needs and amplify the need for more access, coverage, and care for an already marginalized community. For the folx who participated in this project, we have all applied the knowledge of best care and practices with a lens of equity, inclusion, and non-judgemental care.
Emily Ishiki, REST Community Advocate - All Genders
We are grateful for the faithful work of all of the SPU nurses who have worked on these projects, the survivors who have partnered with them to provide critical insights, and Mihkai, who leads the student groups and has invited many nursing students into growing in their understanding of the sex trade and trauma-informed care.
If you’re a healthcare professional, you have full, free access to all of these resources. Please feel free to download, share, and use them in your offices, clinics, and practices.