Medico-legal documentation of rape or sexual assault: are community-service doctors equipped for the task?
S. Afr. fam. pract. (2004, Online)
;
60(1): 812-2018. ilus
Article
in English
| AIM
| ID: biblio-1270059
ABSTRACT
Background:
Following upon two-year internship, community-service doctors make mistakes when they deal with evidence of medico-legal examinations in various settings. These mistakes result in alleged perpetrators being released by courts. This study investigated undergraduate clinical forensic medicine training, based on experiences and opinions of community-service doctors. This article focuses on incidents of alleged rape cases only.Methods:
The study was a quantitative retrospective cohort study that made use of a questionnaire with an adapted Likert scale. An electronic survey tool was employed to target 150 community-service doctors throughout South Africa. Percentages are used to display results.Results:
A response rate of 59.3% was achieved. Although 80% of the participants reported that they had undergraduate training on how to manage alleged rape or sexual assault cases, only 11.4% of the participants had hands-on exposure to an alleged rape case during their undergraduate training. In addition, the majority of the participants (77.1%) never had undergraduate training on how to complete the J88 form. These findings indicate that clinical forensic training in the undergraduate medical programme does not adequately prepare community-service doctors to meet the challenges of clinical forensic practice. The current curriculum should be adapted to address these shortcomings.Conclusions:
Perpetrators cannot be convicted if evidence collected cannot stand up in court. Proper training of undergraduate medical students prior to their community-service posting will ensure that medico-legal documentation is completed correctly, leading to the presentation of credible evidence in a court of law in order to ensure successful conviction of alleged perpetrators
Full text:
Available
Index:
AIM (Africa)
Main subject:
Rape
/
Sex Offenses
/
South Africa
/
Community Health Workers
/
Forensic Medicine
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Country/Region as subject:
Africa
Language:
English
Journal:
S. Afr. fam. pract. (2004, Online)
Year:
2018
Type:
Article
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