Physicians' attitudes toward domestic violence

Introduction. Physicians should undertake preventive and intervening activities in order to respond adequately to cases of domestic violence. Objective. The aim of this study is to establish what physicians' attitudes toward domestic violence are, how educated they are, whether they apply the Special protocol, provided by the Serbian Ministry of Health, whether they report violence, and how well they know community resources involved in the matter. Method. The questionnaire was compiled and distributed to physicians at an expert meeting at the Health Center, Kraljevo in November 2017. Results analysis consisted of: counting, minimum and maximum values, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, and x2-test, Excel (2010). Results. The study included 118 physicians (70.3% female, 29.7% male). The majority of the respondents were ages 41-50 (39.8%), the average age was 45.54 ± 9.2. The general practitioners held prevalence (61.9%). A majority (63.6%) have met with the cases of domestic violence. In the group with 11-20 years of service, there were 19.5% undereducated respondents, which bears statistical significance (p=0.030). Physicians working in the city were more likely to self-educate and so were the specialists. Of all of the respondents, 39.8% were not familiar with the Special protocol, statistically significantly more male doctors (p=0.004), physicians working in the city (p=0.008) and those working at the secondary level of health care (p=0.009). In the cases where violence was suspected, 16.9% of doctors filled in the Form for recording and documenting violence. Domestic violence is regularly reported by 41.5% of the respondents. Psychological violence is the most common type of violence (51.7%). Lacking time to do a routine check on the domestic violence was prevalent in the 61-70 age group, 32.2%. Awareness of city-wide cooperation is spread among 30.5% of the respondents. General practitioners more often had the phone number to help the victims in their officies, with statistical significance (p=0.037). Domestic violence is condemned by 90.7% of the respondents. Conclusion. Evaluate personal, organizational and systematic factors that can improve the implementation of the Special protocol and more effectively wrestle the problem

Barriers to health care professionals in detecting more domestic violence

Introduction. Identification of victims of domestic violence among the women using the healthcare is not sufficient. Objective. The aim of this study is to identify the barriers that prevent health care professionals in identifying domestic violence more often. Method. A questionnaire was distributed to health workers in the Health center of Kraljevo, by e-mail. Results. The study comprised 136 health care workers, 73.3% female and 26.7% male. 70.6% were doctors and 29.4% technicians. The mean age of respondents was 38.93 ± 7.7, (range 31-50), with the average 11.36 ± 7.74 years of service. The social barriers were significantly more present among female health workers (p=0.037). The most frequent answer is the lack of guidelines. This answer is significantly in correlation with professional qualification (p=0.002). The prominent institutional barriers are overwork (53.7%), lack of information about the procedures (significantly present among doctors, p=0.003), and the fear for their own safety (46.3%). Barriers associated to the health care workers themselves have the least number of responses, with limited time as the most important, followed by lack of training (44.9%) and lack of knowledge, that is significantly related to gender (p=0.002) and to qualifications (p=0.009). Women expect more authority in their work, p=0.035. Among the 4 groups of barriers, the majority of answers is related to the victims of violence themselves (43.9%), statistically more significant among doctors, p=0.004, predominantly responding that victims hide the violent behavior of their partners (65.4%). Conclusion. Provide continuous education about domestic violence and evaluation of knowledge, encourage the victims to trust the health system, raise awareness about the judgment of violence, and skillfully inform the women of resources in the community