THE ROLE OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN (VAW) MEDICAL ADVISER IN AN EMERGENCY SERVICE

Abstract

Acts of violence against women are gradually recognized
as one of the most important determinants influencing
their health and their children’s health. Based on this
observation, trained doctors, with the function of a violence against women (VAW) resource adviser, have been
introduced in emergency services.
An average of 225 000 women aged 18 to 75 are estimated to be the victims of domestic violence each year.
Emergency services have a central role to play in caring
for these women and their children as they are at the
crossroads of the first effects of violence, with around 19
million people admitted each year.
Leaving aside the direct traumatic consequences of the
blows they undergo, what leads these women (or their
children) to be seen in an emergency unit is the impact
on their health – psychiatric, obstetric and gynaecological
disorders or instability in chronic diseases –.
Emergency doctors are thus on the front line when it
comes to admit and care for this kind of patients. It is
therefore essential that they should be made sensitive to
this phenomenon and given adequate training.
Some warning signs must alert emergency doctors, such as
the number of admissions in the service, the way the victim, her partner or the children behave.
The second stage is systematic interviewing, as it is done
for other aspects of a patient’s medical history-in a simple
and explicit manner.
So the mission of the VAW emergency medical adviser
appears to be complex: he must be familiar with both the
mechanisms and the consequences related to violence, be
able to detect them, tackle with them, manage to get surrounded and assisted by other experts and create a
downstream network.
In their hospitals, VAW medical advisers will have to
work in close collaboration with the medical advisers in
charge of violence against children, who are supposed to
be appointed before the end of 2017 in the framework of
the French National plan on Struggle against Violence
against Children.