Original ArticlesA Prevalence Survey of Abuse and Screening for Abuse in Urgent Care Patients 1
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
This survey was conducted in the Women & Infants Hospital urgent care-triage area between February 1995 and September 1995. The interviews were administered by hospital volunteers who received 8 hours of training from the investigators and from area rape crisis and domestic violence victim service providers. The Institutional Review Board waived the informed consent requirement because this was considered an extension of routine clinical care.
Women were screened with this survey if they
Results
Of the 397 women in this sample, 255 (64%) were pregnant. Two hundred forty-two (61%) were white, 71 (18%) were black, 61 (15%) were Hispanic, and 23 (6%) were from other ethnic backgrounds. Two hundred thirty-six (59%) were privately insured or members of a health maintenance organization, 161 (41%) received Medicaid or had no insurance. Two hundred twenty-one (56%) had at least a high school education.
One hundred eighty-four women (46%) reported a lifetime history of physical or sexual abuse.
Discussion
Our results support previous work1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, 16that reveals a high prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault in pregnant and nonpregnant female patients with a wide range of presenting complaints. We disagree with other reports11, 12claiming that pregnancy is a risk factor for violence. We found that nonpregnant women report a slightly higher prevalence of abuse than pregnant women. Although some studies11, 12have implicated pregnancy as a risk factor for violence, we
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Funded in part by the Echoing Green Foundation, Public Service Fellowship, New York.