Healthcare Providers’ Perceptions and Experiences of Training to Respond to Violence against Women: Results from a Qualitative Study

Sanjida Arora (), Padma Bhate-Deosthali, Sangeeta Rege, Avni Amin and Sarah R. Meyer
Additional contact information
Sanjida Arora: CEHAT—Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, Mumbai 400055, India
Padma Bhate-Deosthali: CEHAT—Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, Mumbai 400055, India
Sangeeta Rege: CEHAT—Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes, Mumbai 400055, India
Avni Amin: Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
Sarah R. Meyer: Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: Healthcare providers (HCPs) can support women affected by violence, providing a safe way for women to disclose experiences of violence and mitigating violence against women (VAW) through the identification of cases in routine clinical practice. We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with HCPs in three tertiary facilities in Maharashtra, India, who had participated in training using the World Health Organization curriculum, adapted for the Indian context. n = 21 HCPs participated in in-depth interviews and n = 10 nurses participated in two focus group discussions. The respondents indicated that the training approach and content were acceptable and that the skills learned during the training were feasible to implement. A shift in perspective from viewing VAW as a private issue to understanding it as a health issue facilitated HCPs’ response. The training enabled HCPs to recognize barriers faced by women in disclosing violence and their role in supporting disclosure. HCPs reported barriers to providing care for survivors of violence, including a lack of human resources, the time during regular clinical practice, and a lack of strong referral networks. These data can be utilized to inform other efforts to train HCPs in facilities in this setting and provide evidence for ways to improve health systems’ responses to VAW in low-and middle-income country settings.

Keywords: violence against women; qualitative; healthcare practitioners; health system response (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/4/3606/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/4/3606/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:4:p:3606-:d:1072375

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().