About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

19 J. Fam. Violence 1 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/jfamv19 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 19, No. 1, February 2004 (@ 2004) Evaluation of a Health Care Provider Training Program to Identify and Help Partner Violence Victimsl L. Kevin Hamberger,2,5 Clare Guse,2 Jennifer Boerger,3 Debbie Minsky,3 Deb Pape,3 and Christine Folsom4 This study tested four hypotheses about the impact of a 3-h domestic violence training program with 752 health care providers on attitudes and values related to screening and helping partner violence victims. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were that training would be related to: 1) increased self-efficacy to identify and help partner violence victims, 2) increased endorsement of the role of health care providers and settings for helping partner violence victims, and 3) increased comfort making appropriate com- munity referrals to help partner violence victims. Hypothesis 4 was that training effects would be moderated by prior training and by prior experience with helping a victim. Following training, health care providers reported increased self-efficacy, increased comfort making appropriate community referrals, and increased valuation of health care providers and the health care system as having an important role in stopping domestic violence. Hypothesis 4 was also supported. Prior training and/or experience with an abuse victim predicted smaller changes in the dependent variables. These gains held at a 6-month follow-up. Implications for training curriculum design are discussed, in addition to institutional policy implications for determining the benefits versus costs of universal training, including staff who demonstrate prior training or experience with battered victims. Study limitations and future research directions, including the need to measure performance and policy compliance will also be outlined. KEY WORDS: domestic violence; health care; training; self-efficacy. In addition to being a serious social problem, partner violence is being shown to be a serious medical prob- lem, as well. For example, incidence and prevalence of female partner violence victims in primary care medi- cal clinics range between 17 and 25% in the past year and 35-44% over a lifetime (Gin et al., 1991; Hamberger et al., 1992; Johnson & Elliott, 1997). Prevalence of battered victims in emergency departments ranges be- tween 22 and 35% (Dearwater et al., 1998; Roberts et al., 1996). In obstetrical clinics, prevalence rates have been Based on a paper presented at the meeting of the American Psycholog- ical Association, Washington, DC, August 7, 2000. 2Department of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 3A11 Saints Health Care Systems, Inc., Racine, Wisconsin. 4Women's Resource Center, Inc., Racine, Wisconsin. 5To whom correspondence should be addressed at Racine Family Prac- tice Center, P.O. Box 548, Racine, Wisconsin 53401-0548. found to be between 0.9 and 20.1% (Gazmararian et al., 1996). Battered women suffer a wide range of injuries from the violence they endure. Cascardi et al. (1992) found that among women experiencing mild violence, 57% re- ported sustaining either a superficial, or severe bruise and 15% reported sustaining broken bones, teeth or injury to a sense organ, such as an eye or ear. Among women who experienced severe violence, 59% experienced bruising and 11% sustained broken bones, teeth, and/or sense or- gan injury. Cantos et al. (1994) found that 52% of women participating in a domestic violence treatment program reported being injured, with about 24% of the injuries requiring medical attention. More recently, Coben et al. (1999) found that 75.3% of a sample of 648 victimized women reported a history of injury. As with the studies cited above, the most common form of injury was contu- sion or multiple contusion. However, 15% reported bone 1 0885-7482/04/0200-0001/0 © 2004 Plenum Publishing Corporation

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most