The Barriers to Screening for Domestic Violence

Poor performance of a medical team to identify domestic violence is an important problem because there is not an appropriate support. On the other hand, routine screening for domestic violence leads to a rapid identification. Therefore, it may provide a wider network of prevention strategies covering primary and, more importantly, secondary and tertiary prevention. This study was conducted in 2009, aims to determine the barriers of screening domestic violence from the perspective of the medical staff in clinics and hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services. A descriptive study was performed on 100 health care personnel in clinics and hospitals related to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services. Data for this study were collected in a questionnaire included demographic characteristics and barriers of screening domestic violence from the perspective of health care. In this study clinics and hospitals were randomly selected. The findings were analyzed using 17 SPSS version. Based on the results, the mean age of the samples was 33.81 ± 6.38 years. Most respondents (63%) had a bachelor degree and two thirds of them (79 %) were midwives and nurses. The average years of experiences of the personnel was 9.93 ± 5.34 years. In the survey, most participants were confident in their abilities to investigate domestic violence in different areas and were satisfied of helping abused women. However, due to a lack of proper training in this area, they were hesitant to ask questions about violence against women. Also, as most of them expressed, they did not intervene personally; unless, the women themselves sought help. In the area of ​​ employment barriers, lack of sufficient time to discuss about domestic violence, lack of adequate support resources and legal consequences were expressed by most participants as barriers of the screening. According to the results, attention to risks of domestic violence and considering violence as a problem that needs to be screened could be useful for identification of at risk individuals and planning for women training also, to identify ways of reducing threats of violence in men.