Attitude of Primary Health Care Nurses in Kuwait Towards Domestic Violence Against Women

Abstract

Background: 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.
Objectives: The current study was formulated to reveal attitude of nurses towards domestic violence against women and factors affecting this attitude.
Methods: 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%.
Results: 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.
Conclusion: Training nurses about domestic violence, especially against women can improve their attitude and hence a better medical care and support of battered women.