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    She went to the ER for a rape exam. Her nurse didn't know how to do one

    by Alison Bowen, Chicago Tribune Mar 28, 2018 6 minutes

    CHICAGO - When she woke up, she was naked in a stranger's apartment. Her body numb, she didn't know how she'd gotten there, but she knew enough to feel fear.

    Kaite O'Brien realized she wasn't having a nightmare, but waking up into one. She feared she had been assaulted.

    In a Chicago emergency room that morning in 2009, her attending nurse was kind, she recalled, but clearly nervous as she opened the evidence collection box known as a rape kit.

    "It's a little weird to hear, 'Oh this is the first time that I'm doing this,'" said O'Brien, 34. "It makes you feel very unimportant. Like what had happened to me wasn't a big deal, so it doesn't require someone who really knows what they're doing?"

    O'Brien's experience in the emergency room isn't unusual.

    There are more than 196,000 registered nurses in Illinois. Only 32 nurses in the state are certified by the International

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