Increasing identification of domestic violence in emergency departments: a collaborative contribution to increasing the quality of practice of emergency nurses.

This project was initiated to improve the quality of identification and response practices of Emergency Department (ED) nursing staff dealing with possible victims of domestic violence (DV). Nursing staff were trained to identify three key actions in the pathway for domestic violence presentations in the ED. A survey of ED staff was taken pre-training to determine a base-line measure of self-reported knowledge regarding domestic violence policies and practices. The survey was re-administered 1 month and 6 months post-training. A file audit was also undertaken prior to and following the training. Results show the training improved the nurses' confidence, practice and skills in the identification of, and response to, domestic violence, particularly in relation to children. ED nurses are well placed to identify and respond to domestic violence as the ED provides a gateway into health services for women and their children. This paper reports on a participatory action research project which aimed to improve quality and practice around DV for ED staff. The dissemination of the results in this paper are considered to be essential to health services due to dearth of information and research about best practice initiatives for responding to and recognizing domestic violence in the ED.

Action research: politics, ethics and participation.

AIM: This paper contributes to an understanding of the political and ethical aspects of action research (AR). BACKGROUND: Action research is growing in popularity in nursing and health care as a means of changing practice and generating new knowledge. As a methodology, AR relies on a close collaborative working relationship between researcher and participants, but this close relationship is also the source of political and ethical problems faced by researchers and participants. CONTENT: We argue that action researchers and participants working in their own organizations should be clear about the extent to which they are engaged in a political activity, and that AR does not offer the same ethical guarantees concerning confidentiality and anonymity, informed consent, and protection from harm as other research methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative). This argument is illustrated by our experiences of participation in an AR study. CONCLUSION: We outline three areas where AR is implicitly political, and three areas where it is ethically problematic. We recommend that researchers and participants recognize, discuss and negotiate these problematic areas before starting their work.

Illustrating the ethical dimensions of action research.

Graham Williamson and Sue Prosser discuss the ethical dimensions of action research, informed by their experiences of participation in an action research project in the workplace.