Arts & Social Sciences
Te Kura Kete Aronui

Abstract

Flaherty, E. (1996). Pills, platitudes and positive practice: health workers responses to women abused by their male partners.

The purpose of this research was to investigate health services as potential sites in which identification, intervention and support might be offered to women being abused by their male partners. Seven in-depth interviews with women who had been abused were undertaken, along with a mail-out questionnaire of community-based health workers. The analysis and methodology of the research was underpinned by a feminist framework.

The seven interviews are presented in case study form, contextualising the dynamics of abuse experienced, the somatic, psychological and emotional impacts, the women's attempts to secure help and health worker contact. Women discussed their interactions, of both negative and positive nature, with a total of 16 health workers. All of the women eventually talked to a health worker about their partner's abuse. Negative experiences with health workers were those which took place prior to disclosure/identification and included health workers ignoring obvious signs of physical abuse, failing to identify social indicators suggestive of abuse or to ensure adequate follow-up. Positive interactions were those where support, referral, and/or documentation of impacts of abuse for legal purposes, took place. Almost all women described health worker contact following disclosure, as contributing to their goal of living free from abuse.

Forty-four health workers (the majority general practitioners) responded to the mail-out questionnaire. Though respondents had been exposed to little previous training, they showed strong interest in future training opportunities in relation to partner abuse. Health workers had regular (though in some cases infrequent) professional contact with abuse victims, identified physical injuries as those most readily suggesting abuse and identified a number of community agencies to whom they would refer women.

The research highlights the importance of routine assessment of women clients for partner abuse in all community health settings. Should such assessment take place, coupled with appropriate practice, health sites, can act as vital points of intervention in cases of partner abuse.