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Domestic Abuse In Nursing

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“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself,” stated by Harvey Fierstein. The purpose of this paper will to stress the importance of a registered nurse’s action with immediate transition and successful long-term survival when involved in domestic violence.

Domestic Abuse
Types of Abuse There are many types of abuse that patients could be experiencing such as, physicals and sexual abuse. Physical abuse is threatening to inflict pain or actually hurting someone. The abuser may cause pain by slapping, kicking, pushing, and punching or even use objects (Patricelli, 2005). Sexual abuse occurs when an individual is experiencing unwanted sexual attention. …show more content…

Most abuse cases reported are of women and children being the victims and men being the abusers. According to the Center Disease Control, approximately 1 in 4 women will have encountered some form of physical abuse by their intimate partner (Black et. al. 2011). Of the domestic cases reported, men were reported to be the abusers 90% of the time (Department of Health, 2005). In some cases, when the mother leaves the father for abuse, the child experiences increased violence because the child may have shared custody between the parents (Morrison & Wasoff, 2012). Incidence rates are higher in women and children because they can be easily taken advantage of due to not being as physically stronger than the …show more content…

It is common that health care providers are unable to treat patients that are going through domestic abuse because they are uneducated or unaware of the seriousness of the issue. In order to achieve this, health care professionals need to understand the two components of awareness, which are consciousness and recognition. First step is being consciousness meaning that the nurse needs to be knowledgeable about the topic of abuse. It is not enough to be consciousness about abuse but a nurse needs to be able to recognize a circumstance of abuse and identify signs and symptoms of a victim of abuse (Bradbury-Jones et al., 2014). Some of the signs that should call out for attention are if the patient has a choking injury which is considered to be a “red flag” for victims of abuse, if patients are showing anxiousness, inconsistent stories with their injuries, if they had multiple emergency visits, and signs of sexual abuse (Gibbons, 2011). After nurses recognizing signs and symptoms that the patient is displaying abuse, nurses need to proceed through the rest of the physical assessment with caution when they start to ask questions regarding their injuries. If nurses do not proceed with awareness and caution this can lead to scaring off the patient without getting a referral to receiving some counseling and in the end nurse has not done her job to provide the best care and

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