The International Association of Forensic Nurses had been hit by employee fraud and the loss of a substantial grant. 

The Emergency Nurses Association is assuming the membership of the International Association of Forensic Nurses, which recently announced its dissolution.

ENA announced the move last month, following IAFN’s statement that it intended to end operations. According to an internal report, IAFN had been facing a multitude of financial challenges: “Membership decline, operational challenges, including the impact of fraud at the hands of a former employee, and changes in federal funding patterns – with an unexpected termination of our largest federal grant by the administration last year – have coalesced to put IAFN in an unsustainable financial position.” 

In April 2025, IAFN announced that the termination of a multiyear grant from the Department of Justice necessitated removing six staff positions. Last November, IAFN announced that a former employee had stolen approximately $844,000 from the association, and took out a $400,000 loan in the association’s name. The theft is under federal investigation. 

Under the new agreement, ENA will bring IAFN’s approximately 6,000 members into its own community, and handle its continuing education programming. The American Nurses Credentialing Center will handle IAFN’s certifications; its academic journal will still be published.

As it was planning the transfer of those responsibilities, IAFN leadership identified ENA as the best steward for them. “ENA and IAFN have had a long-standing partnership,” said Bridget Walsh, ENA’s Interim Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. “We’ve done shared position statements, shared education, and when they got to the point in their journey where they needed to look for something different, ENA was a natural connection for them.”

Walsh said that while the transition is official starting this week, it has a year-long multiphase process in place to ensure that incoming former IAFN members feel well-served by ENA.

“Our first priority is membership,” Walsh said. “Knowing that these individuals were losing their community, that’s where we focused first.” The organizations have held a pair of virtual town halls with leaders of both groups announcing the change and communicating the process to members. For the time being, she added, the change hasn’t required additional staffing or resources.

ENA has also set up an advisory council for the forensic nurses entering the fold. “The makeup of that group will be approved by the ENA board, but is being informed by a transition task force of leaders and members who are active within IAFN and their board leadership,” Walsh said.

Walsh said ENA’s goal with its new members is to “stop thinking of [the change] as a transition and more thinking it as an expansion of our community and our impact.” To that end, she said the most important metric ENA will pay attention to is retention. 

“The really simple measure of success is that they want to renew their membership after one year,” she said. “It is our goal that we have created value for them, that they see themselves within ENA and within all that we do. We take very seriously the fact that we now represent two very important nursing specialties, and they need to be treated and seen as distinct specialties. We want to work together, so that they see themselves here, that they feel valued here, and that they see education and programming resources that make them want to stay.”

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