Attitude of primary health care nurses in Kuwait towards domestic violence against women

ABSTRACT

Domestic violence against women is an important public health problem. Battered women attend primary health care centers seeking for both medical treatment and support. Nurses with a positive attitude play a key role to deal with victimized women. The current study was formulated to reveal attitude of nurses towards domestic violence against women and factors affecting this attitude. All 1617 nurses registered in primary health care centers in Kuwait were the target population for this study. A total of 988 nurses were interviewed with an overall response rate of 61.1%. The results of the current study revealed that nurses tended to have a relatively low positive overall attitude score towards violence against women [58.3 +13.82%], with a mean percent score of 42.9 +15.99% for relationship between partners domain, 69.7 +21.03% for good reasons to hit wives domain, and 58.7 +20.59% for management of domestic violence domain. Female Kuwaiti nurses tended to have higher positive attitude score than male non-Kuwaiti nurses. Years spent at the current job negatively correlated with the total attitude score of nurses towards domestic violence against women. Training nurses about domestic violence, especially against women can improve their attitude and hence a better medical care and support of battered women