A cross-sectional survey of child abuse management knowledge among emergency medicine personnel in Cape Town, South Africa

INTRODUCTION: Child abuse is a common condition in the emergency centres of South Africa. It is critical for both prehospital emergency care practitioners and emergency centre-based emergency medicine registrars to be competent in screening, diagnosing, treating, and documenting child abuse. Our goal was to assess the knowledge of child abuse management in a sample of prehospital emergency care practitioners and emergency medicine registrars in Cape Town, South Africa.

METHODS: A mixed-methods approach of quantitative and qualitative data was used to survey a sample of 120 participants (30 emergency medicine registrars and 90 prehospital emergency care practitioners: 30 Basic Life Support, 30 Intermediate Life Support, and 30 Advanced Life Support). An expert panel created the survey to ensure content validity and survey questions were designed to assess the perceived and actual knowledge of participants. We hypothesised that there would be significantly higher levels of perceived and actual knowledge in emergency medicine registrars compared to emergency care practitioners. An open-ended question on how participants felt dealing with child abuse was qualitatively analysed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS: There were significant differences in the levels of perceived knowledge (58% of emergency medicine registrars agreed that they felt adequately trained overall, versus 39% of emergency care practitioners; -19% difference, 95% CI -26% to -12%) and actual knowledge (83% of emergency medicine registrars with correct answers, versus 62% of emergency care practitioners; -21% difference, 95% CI -26% to -16%) among participants. Themes that emerged from qualitative analysis included personal distress, retaliation, frustration, medical system frustration, and personal competence concerns.

DISCUSSION: Significant perceived and actual knowledge deficits of child abuse management exist among both emergency care practitioners and emergency medicine registrars in this setting. Future interventions should address the need for guidelines and increased training opportunities to ensure the health and safety of abused children.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2018

Erschienen:

2018

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:8

Enthalten in:

African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence - 8(2018), 2 vom: 15. Juni, Seite 59-63

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Dessena, Bruna [VerfasserIn]
Mullan, Paul C [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Assessment
Child abuse
Journal Article
Paediatrics
South Africa

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 30.03.2022

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.afjem.2018.01.005

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM290878462