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Barriers to Active Inquiry About Intimate Partner Violence Among German Physicians Participating in a Mandatory Training

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Abstract

Physicians frequently represent the first contact person for victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) within the health care system, yet adequate training to comply with these expectations is frequently not incorporated into graduate and post-graduate medical curricula. We developed the first mandatory university-wide training in Germany for the management of IPV victims focusing on communication and legally admissible documentation. Concurrently, we acquired information about previous experiences, attitudes, and barriers for active inquiry about IPV among medical staff. Ninety one percent of the 825 participants completed pre- and post- training surveys and a subgroup participated in a 6–18 month follow-up. Experience, training, and subjective comfort in asking were the most significant predictors of active inquiry in multivariable analyses. Structural limitations, such as time constraints, language barriers, and lack of safe locations represented the primary barriers for active inquiry.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Hedwig Francois-Kettner for ongoing support with the project activities. We are especially grateful to SIGNAL for offering support with the general part of the training sessions and providing some of the materials for these. Furthermore, we would like to thank all extra-university support groups for IPV victims, which have provided materials and feed-back for the design of the current project, just to mention a few SIGNAL e.V., BIG Hotline and LARA.

Funding

the project has been supported in part by the Equal Opportunity Programme of the City of Berlin (Berliner Chancengleichheitsprogram, BCP). The funding source had no role in the design of the study, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, manuscript writing or in the decision to submit the manuscript.

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Equal Opportunities Officer and HuSG (domestic and sexual violence) Prevention and Implementation Program, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Sabine C. Jenner

  2. Department of Legal Medicine and HuSG (domestic and sexual violence) Prevention and Implementation Program, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Saskia S. Etzold

  3. Department of Legal Medicine, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Lars Oesterhelweg

  4. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Anna Stickel

  5. Equal Opportunities Officer, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Christine Kurmeyer

  6. Institutional Violence Prevention Activity Coordination and HuSG (domestic and sexual violence) Prevention and Implementation Program, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

    Dagmar Reinemann

  7. Institute of Gender in Medicine and HuSG (domestic and sexual violence) Prevention and Implementation Program, Charité-Universitätsmedizin, Luisenstr. 65, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Sabine Oertelt-Prigione

Authors
  1. Sabine C. Jenner
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  2. Saskia S. Etzold
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  3. Lars Oesterhelweg
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  4. Anna Stickel
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  5. Christine Kurmeyer
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  6. Dagmar Reinemann
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  7. Sabine Oertelt-Prigione
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sabine Oertelt-Prigione.

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Jenner, S.C., Etzold, S.S., Oesterhelweg, L. et al. Barriers to Active Inquiry About Intimate Partner Violence Among German Physicians Participating in a Mandatory Training. J Fam Viol 31, 109–117 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9754-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9754-2

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