Consultations in the general practice setting for adults who use interpersonal abuse and violence.

Conference:

SAPC ASM 2024 - Bristol

Talk Code:

9B.2

Presenter:

Dr Wei-May Su

Twitter:

@n/a

Co-authors:

Dr Elizabeth (Libby) Dai, Dr Elizabeth Conroy, Prof Kelsey Hegarty, Prof Penelope Abbott

Author institutions:

Western Sydney University, The University of Melbourne, University of Notre Dame, HETI, NSW Health,

Problem

Interpersonal abuse and violence is a public health tragedy. We cannot address the cycle of abuse and violence within our community without also addressing those who use abuse and violence. This scoping review is to understand what we know about the General Practice consultation, specifically: Within general practice, how are adults who use interpersonal abuse and violence identified, responded to, and motivated towards changing abusive behaviour?We use the Royal Australian College of General Practice (RACGP 2021) definition. Interpersonal abuse and violence may be directed towards a partner or family member, or towards someone in the community. Behaviours can include physical, emotional (including neglect), sexual, economic and social abuse, and can occur in person or through technology. Most interpersonal abuse and violence is directed towards women, and most commonly perpetrated by men. However, interpersonal abuse and violence can occur in multiple ways, and our review is not limited by gender patterns or the form of violence used.A preliminary search of MEDLINE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, JBI Evidence Synthesis and Open Science was conducted and no current or underway systematic reviews or scoping reviews on the topic were identified. RACGP. (2021). Abuse and Violence: working with our patients in general practice, 5th edition (the White Book).

Approach

The scoping review will be conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews (Peters MDJ 2020). The search strategy aims to locate both published and unpublished studies using a three-step search strategy. First an initial limited search of MEDLINE (Ovid) and Google was undertaken to identify articles on the topic. The text words contained in the titles and abstracts of relevant articles, and the index terms used to describe the articles were used to develop a full search strategy for Medline (OVID); Embase (OVID); CINAHL (EBSCO Host); PsychInfo (EBSCO Host); Scopus, and grey literature. Sources of unpublished studies and grey literature to be searched include Google and Open Access Repositories (Google Scholar). Other search techniques included hand searching, scanning bibliographies of pertinent authors and contacting experts.

Findings

This is a work in progress. We will share our protocol and preliminary results. Preliminary findings indicate that much of what we know about abuse and violence comes to us from survivors, police, legal or forensic settings, or identified addiction or mental ill-health. Medical practitioners can also be affected by interpersonal violence by colleagues or patients or can themselves be perpetrators.

Consequences

General Practitioners often report discomfort consulting in this space, which is a barrier to effectively addressing the global violence epidemic. We anticipate findings from this review will inform future research and training programs to upskill practitioners.

Submitted by:

Wei-May Su

Funding acknowledgement:

This research is undertaken as part of Dr Wei-May Su’s MPhil candidature, Western Sydney University, with in kind support from Safer Families.