Many Doctors Don’t Ask About Domestic Violence
Many California doctors are missing an opportunity to find victims of domestic violence by failing to ask all their patients during routine office visits about abuse, according to a study released Tuesday.
About 10% of the 400 primary care physicians surveyed said they would inquire about abuse during routine office exams, such as checkups or prenatal visits. By comparison, 79% said they would ask if a patient showed signs of injury.
“That’s reason to be concerned, especially in the context of knowing that physical violence occurs in 4 to 6 million relationships each year,” said the study’s lead author, Michael Rodriguez of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.
Office visits “represent an opportunity where health care providers can do something before the problem requires a visit to the emergency department or to the morgue,” he added.
More doctors are being trained to ask the right questions during exams, said Michael Wilkes, a practicing physician and professor of medicine at UCLA. Medical students at UCLA, for example, take classes so that they can better detect and ask questions about domestic violence, he said.
The study was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
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