Nurses' preparedness to care for women exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: a quantitative study in primary health care

Data was collected using a questionnaire to nurses at the primary health care centres. The response rate was 69.3%. Logistic regression analysis was used to test relationships among variables.Shortcomings were found regarding preparedness among nurses. They lacked organisational support e.g. guidelines, collaboration with others and knowledge regarding the extensiveness of IPV. Only half of them always asked women about violence and mostly when a woman was physically injured. They felt difficulties to know how to ask and if they identified violence they mostly offered the women a doctor's appointment. Feeling prepared was connected to obtaining knowledge by themselves and also to identifying women exposed to IPV.The majority of the nurses were found to be quiet unprepared to provide nursing care to women exposed to IPV. Consequences might be treatment of symptoms but unidentified abuse and more and unnecessary suffering for these women. Improvements are needed on both at the level of the organisation and individual.Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a recognised public health problem with tremendous impact on a woman's health, both during the abuse is taking place and long after it has ceased [1-4]. According to Cutliffe and McKenna (2005), in a relationship where IPV occurs, abuse constitutes; 'physical, psychological or sexual mistreatment and/or other controlling behaviours such as economic or spiritual deprivation that are intended by the abuser to cause harm or are perceived by the victim to cause harm. It is a purposeful behaviour designed to achieve domination and control in the relationship' [[5], p. 28]. IPV occurs in all countries irrespective of socioeconomic status, religion or culture [6,7].When encountering women exposed to IPV, nurses should be well prepared to provide them with nursing care of high quality. Despite that, studies have shown that nurses in primary health care (PHC), are more ill-prepared to detect IPV and intervene than professionals i