Nurses’ Role in Caring for Women Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence in the Sri Lankan Context

Abstract

Intimate partner violence has short- and long-term physical and mental health consequences. As the largest healthcare workforce globally, nurses are well positioned to care for abused women. However, their role in this regard has not been researched in some countries. This paper is based on a qualitative study that explored how Sri Lankan nurses perceive their role in caring for women who have experienced partner violence. Interviews with 30 nurses who worked in diverse clinical and geographical settings in Sri Lanka revealed that nurses' role involved: identifying abuse, taking care of patients' physical needs, attending to their safety, providing support and advice, and making referrals. Barriers to providing care included lack of knowledge; heavy workload; language barriers; threats to personal safety; nurses' status within the healthcare hierarchy; and lack of communication and collaboration between various stakeholder groups within the healthcare system. Nurses also identified a lack of appropriate services and support within hospitals and in the community. The findings reveal an urgent need for the healthcare system to respond to nurses' educational and training needs and help them function autonomously within multidisciplinary teams when caring for abused women. The findings also point to a need to address institutional barriers including the lack of appropriate services for abused women.

Nurse education and understanding related to domestic violence and abuse against women: An integrative review of the literature

“…Participants in the majority of the studies demonstrated favorable attitudes towards the need of nurses for training and education on domestic violence during their undergraduate study (Bessette & Peterson, ; Cho, Cha, & Yoo, ; Glaister & Kesling, ; Guruge,; Inoue & Armitage, ; Schoening, Greenwood, McNichols, Heermann, & Agrawal, ). Nurses often need appropriate strategies as well as skills to respond to IPV/DVA to provide optimum care.…”

“…Therefore, the nurses tend to lack domestic violence training and possessed limited knowledge, over and above were happy to get engaged with females experiencing IPV/DVA. Other studies such as Guruge () in a qualitative interpretive descriptive study and Rigol‐Cuadra et al. () in a descriptive qualitative study focused on the training needs, desirable for the ongoing support of women who are living with a violent companion.…”

To ask, or not to ask: the hesitation process described by district nurses encountering women exposed to intimate partner violence

“…), previous studies have also described barriers to such an encounter. Lack of time, lack of privacy, difficulty knowing how to inquire about IPV (Guruge , Sundborg et al . ), lack of interest (Glass et al .…”

“…), lack of interest (Glass et al . ) and organisational barriers (Guruge , Sundborg et al . ) have kept nurses from identifying women exposed to IPV.…”

The perception of adolescents’ inter-parental conflict and accompanied emotional security: A descriptive study

“…Previous research suggested that nurses have to be equipped with necessary knowledge and training to educate, support and assist parents to constructively solve their conflict so that adolescents can avoid negative consequences of their parents' conflict. [44] In conclusion, the common dominator between adolescents at the current study is the stress and negative emotions that adolescents displayed. Witnessing parents' conflict and experiencing such negative emotions may adversely impact on the future of the adolescents.…”