Clinician acceptability and use of smartphone digital photography in sexual assault forensic examination in an Australian regional district's sexual assault services

Photography supports written and diagrammatic clinical documentation in forensic sexual assault examinations. In settings where specialist photographers are not available, clinician confidence in image capture affects the usage of photography as a clinical tool. A regional Australian health district with multiple sexual assault services across metropolitan, regional and rural sites had previously low usage of photography to support clinical documentation of injury. Smartphones were introduced as image capture devices and procedures were implemented to support their use and the secure storage of images. Training was provided to medical and nursing staff. In cases where injuries were present, the use of photography increased significantly from 13% to 27% (p = 0.0041). Surveys were conducted of clinicians to examine factors affecting use of and attitudes to photography in sexual assault examinations, both prior to and three years after introducing the new devices. Smartphones were generally well accepted by clinicians as an easy-to-use alternative to traditional single lens reflex (SLR) camera photography, particularly for documenting complex injuries that are hard to describe in words and diagrams alone. Smartphone photography may be particularly useful for rural and regional settings where clinicians have a lower caseload and therefore less regular experience with photography equipment, and no access to specialist forensic photographers.