A National Assessment of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Confidence of Prehospital Providers in the Assessment and Management of Child Maltreatment

Abstract

Prehospital providers expressed confidence in their abilities to recognize and to manage cases of child abuse and neglect; however, significant deficiencies were reported in several critical knowledge areas, including identification of child maltreatment, interviewing techniques, and appropriate documentation.

Barriers to Reporting Child Maltreatment

“…Only 1 of 8 modules in the current North Carolina EMT curriculum is related to pediatric health, including child maltreatment [23], and as little as 5-10 minutes may be dedicated to training on how to recognize and report child maltreatment [24]. Half of EMTs in a national sample requested additional training about the signs and symptoms of child maltreatment, and only 25% strongly agreed that they felt comfortable reporting physical abuse; fewer felt comfortable reporting sexual abuse (9.2%) or neglect (21.0%) [15]. Effective training, policies, and practices that improve reporting rates already exist [25,26].…”

“…Structured screening for professionals can decrease ambiguity in identifying the threshold for reporting, and having routine, universally used procedures can help to reduce the subjective nature of the evaluation of risk. Additional training on the recognition and reporting of child maltreatment improves professionals' knowledge and increases their confidence to report suspected maltreatment [15].…”

“…In one study, professionals with at least 10 hours of continuing education on reporting procedures were more likely to report suspected maltreatment than were those with less than 10 hours of training [14]. A 2006 survey of 1,237 prehospital personnel found that nearly 11% received no training on child maltreatment during their initial certification course; 44% reported no training on child maltreatment during their continuing medical education in the past year; and 35.9% received only 1-2 hours of continuing medical education on child protection [15]. The majority (78%) of respondents indicated that they would like additional training on child protection, with 50% requesting more training on signs and symptoms and 46% requesting more training on protocols [15].…”

“…A 2006 survey of 1,237 prehospital personnel found that nearly 11% received no training on child maltreatment during their initial certification course; 44% reported no training on child maltreatment during their continuing medical education in the past year; and 35.9% received only 1-2 hours of continuing medical education on child protection [15]. The majority (78%) of respondents indicated that they would like additional training on child protection, with 50% requesting more training on signs and symptoms and 46% requesting more training on protocols [15]. This paper examines 3 research questions: How familiar are EMS professionals with mandatory reporting laws and agency policy?…”

Acil sağlık çalışanlarının çocuk istismarı ve ihmali hakkında genel bilgilerinin değerlendirilmesi

“…Child maltreatment is underreported in all countries mostly despite mandatory reporting policies. Several studies indicated that the main causes are unawareness of legal written protocols regarding reporting of child maltreatment, incorrect reporting knowledge, recognizing deficiency of abuse and interviewing techniques [4][5][6][7]. Therefore, there has been lots of studies regarding the level of knowledge and perspectives of different health provider groups to identify and to spot the problematic steps (prehospital providers, physicians, nurses, allied health workers, team directors) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”