A review of the challenges of screening for domestic violence against women from the perspective of health professionals

Abstract

Background: Domestic violence has a significant effect on women's reproductive, physical, and mental health, and it is a significant threat to everyone's health, so that, it sometimes leads women to commit suicide. Although many of these women will refer to receive medical care due to domestic violence, few of them are identified by health care providers. The present study aimed to review the challenges of screening for domestic violence against women from the perspective of health professionals.

Materials and method: This study is a scoping review. The study was performed in five stages, which include (1) designing the research question, (2) searching and extracting research-related studies in national and international databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, Magiran, Scientific Information Database (SID), IranDoc and Google Scholar search engine, from inception to March 2021, (3) selecting related studies, (4) scheduling and summarizing data and information, and (5) reporting the results.

Results: Out of 411 articles reviewed, 10 article met our inclusion criteria and were included. According to the results of the studies, barriers of screening for domestic violence can be classified into three areas, which include barriers related to employees (lack of knowledge and training, lack of time to conduct screening, lack of staff confidence, client judgment, and lack of security and comfort for asking related questions and forgetting employees), barriers related to the client and the prevailing culture in the society (tolerating and not reporting domestic violence, fear of spouse due to high power of men in society, fear of losing children and life, and racial and cultural issues) and barriers related to the organization (lack of necessary support from the organization, lack of funding from the organization, lack of protocol).

Conclusion: Considering the high number of barriers of detecting women affected by the domestic violence, this study could be used in program designation, and implementation of effective interventions to remove barriers of domestic violence screening. Health care providers can use the results of this review to prepare educational packages according to their cultural background to improve understanding and women's cooperation in the domestic violence prevention and screening programs.

Keywords: Attitude of health personnel; Health care provider; domestic violence; intimate partner violence.