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Researchers urge orthopedists to ask women at fracture clinics about intimate partner violence

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One in six women in orthopedic fracture clinics have been victims of intimate partner violence within the past year and one in 50 women at these clinics are there directly because of intimate partner violence, according to research from the prevalence of abuse and intimate partner violence surgical evaluation, or PRAISE study.

“Almost three-quarters of the women in our study believed that health care providers should ask all women about intimate partner violence, and about two-thirds agreed that orthopedic surgeons are particularly well placed to do this,” Mohit Bhandari, MD, MSc, FRCSC, an Orthopedics Today Editorial Board member, stated in a press release.

 

Mohit Bhandari

Bhandari and colleagues looked at questionnaires from 2,945 women who met the inclusion criteria at 12 fracture clinics in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark and India. The women were asked direct questions about physical, sexual and emotional intimate partner violence (IPV) and answered questions from the Women Abuse Screening Tool and Partner Violence Screening questionnaires.

They found one in six women had a history of IPV within the past year and one in three women experienced IPV within their lifetime, according to the abstract. Of 49 women who arrived at the clinic due to IPV, only 7 women had been asked about IPV by health care providers. When analyzing data by country, Bhandari and colleagues noted that women in the Netherlands and Denmark were at a reduced risk for IPV in the past 12 months than women in the United States and Canada.

“Over 1 billion women around the world experience some form of gender-based violence each year,” Bhandari said. “The frequency of physical injuries associated with the violence mandates that we, as orthopedic surgeons, work hard to identify and ensure the safety of women in our trauma clinics.”

Reference:

Bhandari M. Lancet. 2013;doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61205-2.

Disclosure: Bhandari receives funding in part from a Canada Research Chair. The Orthopaedic Trauma Association, Canadian Orthopaedic Foundation and McMaster University Surgical contributed funding to this study.