Knowledge and attitude of primary health care staff screening and not screening for domestic violence against women

Background: Violence against women is an important public health problem that draws attention of a wide spectrum of clinicians. Attitude and knowledge of the primary health care (PHC) staff can affect their ability and willingness to screen for and manage domestic violence (DV) against women. Objectives: Reveal the impact of knowledge and attitude of workers to screen for DV against women. Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was carried out in PHC centers located in two randomly selected health regions in Kuwait. The study involved all available physicians (210) and nurses (464) in the selected centers. The overall response rate was 54.3 A. A self-administrative questionnaire was used for data collection. It included four main aspects relevant to knowledge and one attitude domain regarding DV. A 5-point, Likert-scale was used to assess participant's answers for each item. Results: Male physicians were significantly more likely to screen for violence (36.2% compared with 18.8% for females, P < 0.001) and (51.2% compared with 26.4% for nurses, P < 0.001).Those screening for violence had a significantly higher mean percent overall knowledge score (73.8 +/- 9.5 compared with 70.9 +/- 11.2%, P = 0.006). The only knowledge sub-domain showing significant difference was the psychological sub-domain (78.4 +/- 20.3 compared with 69.4 +/- 26.3%, P = 0.004). Although, no significant differences were detected for each of the questions of this domain yet, those not screening for violence had a significantly higher mean percent score than those screening for violence (70.1 +/- 18.6 compared with 65.5 +/- 16.5%, P = 0.015). Conclusion: Physicians at the PHC centers screened for violence against women more than nurses. Although, the knowledge of those screening for violence was better than those for not screening, yet more positive attitude was demonstrated among those not screening. Task and skill based programs should be planned to enhance both knowledge and skills of the health care staff about the screening process. Other factors affecting the screening process such as infrastructure and physical environment need to be considered. (C) 2012 Alexandria University Faculty of Medicine. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.