Domestic Violence Research Critique Essay

Introduction Domestic abuse is a problem in the USA, and the research article that I am critiquing is studying the effectiveness of screening for domestic abuse in health care pre-screening settings. Domestic abuse is a hard situation for the woman going through it and often times it’s a hard subject to discuss. In order to help women with this process it’s important that as health care providers we understand the complexities of domestic abuse and become educated on how to approach the situation with patients. Throughout this critique we will discuss how this protects the patient, how data was obtained, how the data was managed/analyzed, and how it was interpreted. Protection of Human Participants This study is ultimately helping promote awareness/protection to patients in a health care setting by addressing the possibility of domestic abuse in each situation. The study consisted of measuring the rate of domestic abuse in the presence and absence of screenings. The study also compared the outcomes of interventions with women with known abuse from a male with women not receiving interventions who have been abused. There is a need for women to be able to get to a safer place such as a physician’s office and discuss private matters so they don’t feel threatened. Most women have a hard time discussing any issues regarding domestic abuse they have had because they fear losing something they loved so deeply. Data The data that was pulled was from multiple sources; sources included research articles combined with survey results from different medical professionals. The research articles were used to formulate the questions presented in the survey handed out the medical professionals. The three questions presented were â€Å"Do women patients and health professionals find  screening for domestic violence acceptable? Do screening programs increase the identification of women who are experiencing domestic violence? Do interventions with women identified in healthcare settings improve outcomes?† (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder 2002). According to the study most physicians and emergency care workers were not in favor of the screening. Women who were surveyed as to whether they think it would be helpful to be screened at their physician’s office were mostly in favor by 75%. Another study that researched an emergency department’s response to nurses screening for a history of abuse and 53% were in favor. Problems The lack of solid information and research articles led to more extraneous variables. The research articles in play had lack of information and quality information. There was no monitoring of the quality of items extracted from the information from the medical records, according to this research article. Also another variable would be women who have a hard time speaking up about domestic violence even if it did happen to them, they may not speak about it and it would be a low quality outcome. The article talked about how women who had been abused dealt with the pain of the abuse after and if they sought out help? Analysis of Data 85% of women found the screening in health care settings acceptable, which is positive in relation to the fact that women care about their safety. 2 surveys found that two thirds of health care providers and emergency room nurse were not in favor of screening for domestic abuse. The results of the data collected were hard to analyze because the collection of data gained for this research study wasn’t solid and there were a lot of different variables. At the time this research study was conducted there wasn’t a system of screening women for abuse. Findings/Interpretation In the year 2015 most hospital facilities add it to part of their admission screen. The findings in this quantitative research analysis didn’t support that outcome. Healthcare providers, according to the data in this study, weren’t agreeable to the benefits of having a screening for women for domestic abuse (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder, 2002). There are holes in the data collected as far as to why the healthcare providers  felt like this wouldn’t benefit women. There are a lot of domestic abuse cases, and I believe these findings were proven wrong many years later due to the fact we prescreen men and women in our present hospital facilities. The limitations found by the researchers included improper research/data collection done by the researchers who wrote the articles referenced in this research analysis. The research presented will set other researchers on the path to find answers to this ongoing problem of domestic abuse. I believe that in t he future we will be more thoroughly trained on the signs and symptoms of abuse, and certain cue’s we as nurses can look for. As healthcare providers it’s important that we interject when we feel our patient is unsafe. Conclusion Domestic Abuse is unfortunately happening all around us in the USA. Using and building off research studies such as this quantitative research analysis will help us open our minds to different answers. According to this research study the women interviewed about if they think it’s a good idea to pre-screen for domestic abuse. This could have been skewed in a lot of ways, but one situation that makes the most sense is talking with your physician about this problem. Usually people consider physicians’ offices as a safe zone. As long as they don’t feel threatened they tend to open up a bit more. When the research study points to the health care providers that aren’t willing/or don’t want to do the pre-screening for domestic abuse, it makes you wonder if there were other factors involved in their interview process. This study was inconclusive in regards to lack of quality information from the stated research articles. The base of this research study led us to believe that pre-screenings for women being seen in a physician offices aren’t necessary. The research had obviously gone further than this article due to the fact we now pre-screen everyone in a hospital setting. Reference Ramsay, J., Richardson, J., Carter, Y. H., Davidson, L. L., & Feder, G. (2002). Should health professionals screen women for domestic violence? Systematic review. Bmj, 325(7359), 314.