Effective Health Care
Response to IPV

 
How Can Your Practice Environment Facilitate Your Health Care Response to Intimate Partner Violence?

Space for confidential screening

In order for you to respond to intimate partner violence, your practice environment needs to allow for private and confidential screening. If patients cannot be in the room alone with you when you ask the question they will likely not be able to disclose current abuse. Ideally you establish some time alone with each patient in your protocol. Settings that simply do not allow for routine time alone with each patient (e.g. emergency rooms) can establish procedures for moving patients to confidential spaces whenever indicators of abuse are present. See: Protocols

Outreach and educational materials

Outreach and educational materials can greatly facilitate your response. You can reach out to patients while they are waiting or using the rest rooms. You can share materials with them even though you may not have the time to talk to them much.

Imagine a survivor coming into your clinic. There is a poster on intimate partner violence reaching out to her in the waiting area. Then the intake questionnaire asks her about victimization. While you see her, you have a button on your coat that says: “It’s o.k. to talk to me about domestic violence”. You ask her directly about it but she decides not to disclose. You let her know that there are safety cards and brochures in the restroom, a safe and confidential place for her to pick them up. She goes to the restroom, picks up a safety card, and slips it into her shoe. She leaves it under her sole for a few weeks, then takes it out to call the hotline number to talk to an advocate. She also knows that she can bring it up with you at a future visit.

In this case you would have implemented quite an effective response to intimate partner violence, without taking much time at all.

• Safe Access to Outreach Materials: It is absolutely crucial to think about safe ways for survivors to access the outreach material. It may not be safe for them to take brochures home. If you put the brochures in the waiting room within public view, they will likely gather dust on the shelves. Try putting them in exam rooms and rest rooms where patients can pick them up unobserved. Handouts and large brochures may be too big to take home safely. Small safety cards or coins may work better. You can offer patients access to more extensive materials in your clinic, if there is a space where they can read them.

• Multicultural/Multilingual Materials: Try to address all potential victims. For example, a gay male survivor of abuse may not feel addressed if all posters and cards refer to the victim as female. Try to include materials that are culturally and linguistically appropriate to the patients you serve.

A selection of multicultural/multilingual posters, stickers, buttons, safety cards and other outreach materials are available from the Family Violence Prevention Fund www.endabuse.org  à programs à health à health materials catalogue or http://store.yahoo.com/fvpfstore/healpractool.html

Vermont-specific safety cards for victims of domestic or sexual violence are available on this website under Tools and Forms to download. You can download them in PDF format and print them out for your office. The Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault can send you a small number of these cards (call 1-802-223-1302 and ask for Alex, or email library@vtnetwork.org).

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