Rachel Lapp

Rachel Lapp is a Board Certified Emergency Nurse, Trauma Certified Registered Nurse, Trauma Nurse Specialist, and Board Certified Adult/Adolescent Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. She earned her Bachelors degree from Elmhurst University in 2014.

Over the past nine years, Lapp has worked in urban emergency departments across the Chicagoland area, taking a special interest in working with at-risk and minority populations. In early 2018, she was given the opportunity to attend SANE training and to serve as the SANE site lead at her hospital thereafter. She grew in this role while working with many of her mentors. She participated in the system-wide SANE collaborative meetings and helped create many of the processes and procedures utilized in the forensic care of patients at her hospital.

Lapp has spent the past year as a SANE program site lead developing an Adult SANE Nursing Program at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. Her focus has been to demystify forensic nursing for emergency department nurses through education and to make SANE training accessible to interested nurses hospital-wide. She has recently transitioned to a regional Forensic Nurse Examiner Program Manager and will be overseeing Lutheran General and two additional hospital sites in the Chicagoland area. She is excited for this new chapter and is eager to grow the forensic nurse examiner program to its full potential.

Lapp has an interest in exploring sex education as a primary prevention strategy for sexual violence. Her next academic goal is to pursue a master's in human sexuality with a focus in sex education. In the future, she hopes to work as a sex educator in conjunction with her work as forensic nurse. Her time spent with members of the Academy of Forensic Nursing has inspired her to explore going back to school for this non-traditional degree.

She has both passion for learning and teaching and seeks to mentor and inspire those who are beginning their journey into Forensic Nursing. As a member of the Board of Directors, she aims to bring her perspective as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse. She hopes to advocate for SANEs and SANEs-in-training who are working at the bedside and in need of accessible education and tangible support through their journeys. She has recently joined both the Academy of Forensic Nursing Education Committee as well as the Interprofessional Collaboration Committee.