Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Jan 10:11:1.
doi: 10.1186/1472-6955-11-1.

Nurses' preparedness to care for women exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: a quantitative study in primary health care

Eva M Sundborg  1 , Nouha Saleh-Stattin, Per Wändell, Lena Törnkvist
Affiliations

Nurses' preparedness to care for women exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: a quantitative study in primary health care

Eva M Sundborg et al. BMC Nurs. .

Abstract

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) has a deep impact on women's health. Nurses working in primary health care need to be prepared to identify victims and offer appropriate interventions, since IPV is often seen in primary health care. The aim of the study was to assess nurses' preparedness to identify and provide nursing care to women exposed to IPV who attend primary health care.

Method: Data was collected using a questionnaire to nurses at the primary health care centres. The response rate was 69.3%. Logistic regression analysis was used to test relationships among variables.

Results: Shortcomings were found regarding preparedness among nurses. They lacked organisational support e.g. guidelines, collaboration with others and knowledge regarding the extensiveness of IPV. Only half of them always asked women about violence and mostly when a woman was physically injured. They felt difficulties to know how to ask and if they identified violence they mostly offered the women a doctor's appointment. Feeling prepared was connected to obtaining knowledge by themselves and also to identifying women exposed to IPV.

Conclusion: The majority of the nurses were found to be quiet unprepared to provide nursing care to women exposed to IPV. Consequences might be treatment of symptoms but unidentified abuse and more and unnecessary suffering for these women. Improvements are needed on both at the level of the organisation and individual.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Participant recruitment flowchart.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Garcia-Moreno C, Jansen HAFM, Ellsberg M, Heise L, Watts CH, Wo WM-CS. Prevalence of intimate partner violence: findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence. Lancet. 2006;368(9543):1260–1269. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69523-8. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ellsberg M, Jansen HA, Heise L, Watts CH, Garcia-Moreno C. Intimate partner violence and women's physical and mental health in the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence: an observational study. Lancet. 2008;371(9619):1165–1172. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60522-X. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Montero I, Escriba V, Ruiz-Perez I, Vives-Cases C, Martin-Baena D, Talavera M, Plazaola J. Interpersonal violence and women's psychological well-being. J Womens Health (Larchmt) 2011;20(2):295–301. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2010.2136. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lindhorst T, Beadnell B. The long arc of recovery: characterizing intimate partner violence and its psychosocial effects across 17 years. Violence against women. 2011;17(4):480–499. doi: 10.1177/1077801211404548. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Cutcliffe JR, McKenna HP. The essential concepts of nursing: building blocks for practice. New York: Elsevier; 2005.

LinkOut - more resources