Knowledge and Behavior of Family Nurses with Respect to Violence against Women

Abstract

Introduction: Studies show deprivation in the training of nurses, which limits their knowledge and behaviors for the management of violence against women.

Objective: To describe the knowledge about health policies and the behavior of family nurses as part of the care of women victims of violence.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 128 nurses from Teresina, Brazil. A questionnaire was applied, including sociodemographic and occupational variables, as well as others related to the topic. To verify the association between qualitative variables, the Person's chi-squared test (χ²) or Fisher's test were used. A significance level of 0.05 was considered.

Results: 95 % answered correctly between five and nine of the ten questions on the subject. There was a significant association between training time and five to ten correct answers. 82.8 % answered that, during consultations, they usually observe signs indicative of violence. 83.6% know the notification form, but 28 % expressed that filling it out was difficult for them. It was evident that 59.10 % do not carry out activities to confront violence together with the health team and the community.

Conclusions: Most of the family nurses working in the municipality did not carry out training or awareness-raising activities on confronting violence; they answered correctly between five and nine of the ten questions related to the topic. However, they questioned the need for such damage notification as an important instrument encouraging the construction of public policies to confront the phenomenon.

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