Tilahun Desta¹*, Mamo Deksisa², Habtewold Mulat¹ and Sahle Tsegabrhan³

¹Assistant Professor, Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon, St. Paulmillennium Medical Collage, Aabethospital, Ethiopia
¹Assistant Professor of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon, Sport and Arthroscopy Surgeon, St. Paulmillennium Medical Collage, Aabethospital, Ethiopia
²Consultant Orthopedic and Trauma Surgeon, St. Paulmillennium Medical Collage, Aabethospital, Ethiopia

*Corresponding Author: Tilahun Desta, Assistant Professor, Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon, St. Paulmillennium Medical Collage, Aabethospital, Ethiopia.

Received: January 06, 2022; Published: March 04, 2022

Abstract

Background: Child physical abuse is a common practice worldwide and often times victims are brought to health facilities to get medical care. As a result, responsibility of detection and reporting falls on physicians. Knowledge on child physical abuse and reporting system is essential for the first contact person. Anecdotally, on global scale several cases of child abuse have been missed out at the first contact level and knowledge of reporting system and practice is low. Therefore we undertook this survey to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practice of physicians towards child physical abuse and associated factors in our setup.

Objectives: To assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of physicians toward child physical abuse and associated factors in Aabet hospital, SPHMMC, Ethiopia, April 30 - May 30, 2021

Methods: from April 30- May 30, 2021, Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted in Aa BET hospital, SPHMMC, Addis Ababa involving all physicians working in the hospital. Data was collected using pre-tested self administered structured questionnaire via printed form and electronic google form. Data was cleaned, edited and fed to computer and analyzed using SPSS for window version 26D. Ethical approval from IRB and informed consent from participants was obtained.

Results: Response rate was 92.4% (n = 152). Only 7.9% of participants had formal training in child physical abuse. Our participants lacked knowledge on signs and symptoms of physical abuse, first action to be done when suspecting child physical abuse and legal authorities to report suspected cases. Majority of our participants possessed positive attitude on importance of detecting and reporting of child physical abuse case although 62.5% of the participants claim the amount of material presented regarding child abuse is insufficient. 61.2% physicians suspected child physical abuse and only one third of which reported to legal authorities. Shortage of knowledge about the referral procedure was listed as the most common cause of underreporting. Only 7.2% of physician’s believe their institution provided them with procedure to follow when child physical abuse case is suspected.

Conclusion and Recommendation: Majority of physicians lacked knowledge but were positive about the need to assess child physical abuse. Child abuse course should be included in both undergraduate and post graduate teaching programs. Regular training on the subject matter shall be provided in the institution and procedural framework should be established on management of suspected child physical abuse cases.

Keywords :Child Physical Abuse; Child Maltreatment; KAP

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Citation

Citation: Tilahun Desta., et al. “Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Physicians Towards Child Physical Abuse and Associated Factors in Addis Ababa Burn, Emergency and Trauma Hospital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2021GC".Acta Scientific Orthopaedics 5.4 (2022): 33-44.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Tilahun Desta., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.