BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) has a deep impact on women's health. Nurses working in primary health care need to be prepared to identify victims and offer appropriate interventions, since IPV is often seen in primary health care. The aim of the study was to assess nurses' preparedness to identify and provide nursing care to women exposed to IPV who attend primary health care.MethodData 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.ResultsShortcomings 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.ConclusionThe 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.

This study illuminates the importance of a supportive work environment in reducing district nurses' hesitation to ask about intimate partner violence and to propose continuing education, training and supervision for district nurses regarding intimate partner violence.

The aim of this study was to describe the translation and the cross-cultural adaptation process of questionnaire about intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV is a serious threat to women's health. There is a need for instruments to measure the results of educational interventions. The Violence Against Women Health Care Provider Survey was found suitable for translation and adaptation to the Swedish cultural context. A five-step process according to Guillemin et al. was followed: (a) translation by independent translators, (b) back translation of each translation independently from each other, (c) committee review with multidisciplinary members produces the final version, and (d) pretesting to ensure equivalence between source and final version, and (e) weighting scores. The Swedish version consisted of the same number of items as the original. The results indicated that the questionnaire can be used in Sweden to measure the effectiveness of IPV training programs.

The results indicate that the intervention had a low impact on district nurses' preparedness. The educational intervention must be adjusted; a main focus of changes should be the addition of continuing postintervention supervision and support.

This study used step-by-step exploratory factor analysis in the framework of confirmatory factor analysis (EFA/CFA) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the translated and culturally adapted Swedish version of "The Violence Against Women Health Care Provider Survey." The Swedish version of the instrument was needed to measure district nurses' preparedness to encounter women exposed to intimate partner violence. In the first step of EFA/CFA, the eight-factor model was confirmed. The item-total correlations ranged from .22 to 1.01, and Cronbach's alphas from .68 to .71. After removing four items, the corrected item-total correlations ranged from .40 to .97. On the basis of the analysis, we concluded that the Swedish version of the instrument is valid and reliable for evaluating the preparedness of district nurses in Sweden to encounter women exposed to intimate partner violence.