Mental Health Research Center, Psychosocial Health Research Institute, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
BMC Prim Care. 2023 Jan 31;24(1):37. doi: 10.1186/s12875-023-01988-9.
Child maltreatment has been a major worldwide problem and has remained a persistent public health challenge in all countries. Physicians have a significant role in the prevention and intervention of child maltreatment. An educated physician that can effectively identify and report child maltreatment can fill one of the most significant gaps in reducing child abuse. This study was performed to examine the knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding child maltreatment among Iranian medical students through an internship course.
All the medical students (235 students) of the Iran University of Medical Sciences who passed the internship entrance exam in the 2019-2020 academic year participated in this study. The participants completed a 49-item scale questionnaire built by combining three other validated questionnaires that evaluate their attitude, knowledge, and practice skills in the first month of their internship course and then completed the same questionnaire 18 months later, at the end-point of the internship period.
One-hundred thirty nine (59.1%) participants were female, and 96 (40.9%) were male. The mean age of the subjects was 24.35 ± 0.76. Only 7 (3%) of them formerly received any education about child maltreatment. There was a significant improvement in scores of the knowledge of prevention (p-value = 0.001), the practice of prevention (p-value < 0.001) and the general subscale of the practice section (p-value < 0.001) during the internship course. However, the performance of participants decreased significantly in the subscales of the attitude towards diagnosis (p-value = 0.001) and the attitude towards reporting (p-value < 0.001) of child maltreatment. At the end of the study, the result of graduated physicians was: The total knowledge and attitude of participants were satisfactory, and the majority were at reasonable levels. Although in the practice subscale, 70.6% of the participants didn't identify, 84.7% didn't refer, and 86.4% didn't report a child abuse case in the past year.
The knowledge and attitude of Iranian physicians regarding child maltreatment are at a satisfactory level. Although, the practice level has deficiencies. In addition, our findings show that Iranian interns have a shallow experience regarding child maltreatment, particularly despite the higher scores in attitude and knowledge, which can be the reason for deficiencies in the practice level.
儿童虐待是一个全球性的主要问题，在所有国家仍然是一个持续存在的公共卫生挑战。医生在预防和干预儿童虐待方面发挥着重要作用。一位受过教育的医生能够有效地识别和报告儿童虐待，可以填补减少虐待儿童方面的最大空白之一。本研究旨在通过实习课程检查伊朗医学生在儿童虐待方面的知识、态度和实践。
所有通过 2019-2020 学年实习入学考试的伊朗医科大学医学生（235 名学生）都参加了这项研究。参与者在实习课程的第一个月完成了一份由三个其他经过验证的问卷组合而成的 49 项量表问卷，评估他们在实习课程中的态度、知识和实践技能，然后在实习结束时的 18 个月后完成相同的问卷。
139 名（59.1%）参与者为女性，96 名（40.9%）为男性。受试者的平均年龄为 24.35±0.76。只有 7 名（3%）人以前接受过任何关于儿童虐待的教育。预防知识评分（p 值=0.001）、预防实践评分（p 值<0.001）和实践部分一般子量表评分（p 值<0.001）均有显著提高。然而，参与者在虐待儿童的诊断态度（p 值=0.001）和报告态度（p 值<0.001）子量表中的表现显著下降。研究结束时，毕业生的结果为：参与者的总体知识和态度令人满意，大多数处于合理水平。尽管在实践子量表中，70.6%的参与者没有识别，84.7%没有转诊，86.4%没有在过去一年报告虐待儿童案件。
伊朗医生对儿童虐待的知识和态度处于令人满意的水平。然而，实践水平存在不足。此外，我们的研究结果表明，伊朗实习医生对儿童虐待的经验较少，尽管在态度和知识方面得分较高，但这可能是实践水平不足的原因。
