Determination of information, awareness and attitudes of doctors working in Adana provincial center for family medicine unit on child abuse and neglect

Introduction and Objective: To investigate the causes and consequences of child abuse and neglect in the context of medical, legal, developmental and psychosocial issues and to evaluate the effects of child health not only in the current period also in their future life, if it is not diagnosed and the measures are not taken, it is again problem of public health which has high death risk. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of knowledge and attitudes of the doctors who serve as the first level health service provider in the Adana Provincial Family Unit of Adana Provincial Center for Family Medicine and to explain the abuse and negativity of the child and to reveal their awareness and attitudes on this subject and to influence their level of education and professional experience on abuse and other factors that affect it. Materials and Methods: This study is a descriptive study of 485 family medicine practitioners working in 113 family health centers that offer primary health care in four central districts of Adana. There are 113 family health centers (FHC) and 485 family physicians in the central districts of Adana. Their distribution according to the provinces, Seyhan; 53 FHC 233 family physician, Çukurova 20 FHC 97 family physician, Yüreğir 25 FHC 116 family physician, Sarıçam 15 FHC 39 family physician. In the study, it was aimed to reach the entire clinic (10 physicians who applied the preliminary questionnaire were not included in the survey and 475 family physicians constituted the research community) without choosing the sample for the physicians working in FHCs. FHCs were frequently visited more than once and 439 (92.4 %) were reached and 375 (85.4% of the reached family physicians) were surveyed face-to-face by the researcher. Since 64 of the reached physicians (14.6%) did not want to participate in the study, 375 physicians completed the study. Written informed consent form was taken from the family physicians participating in the questionnaire. Within the scope of the study, a personal information form of 17 questions including physicians 'sociodemographic characteristics, educational status, working hours, encounter situations, intervention characteristics and physicians' knowledge level about child abuse and neglect were defined as '' Diagnosis of Symptoms and Risks of Child Abuse and Neglect '' (DOSAROCAAN) developed by Aynur Uysal. Oriented Scale Form "was used. The statistical analysis of the data was made with the help of SPSS 19 for Windows package program as statistical analysis using chi-square test, t test, ANOVA test, correlation test and p <0.05 was considered significant. Findings: The age of family physicians participating in the study ranged from 24 to 68 years and the mean age was 47.46. 66,7 % of the family physicians are male and 33,3% are female physicians. 91.5% of physicians are general practitioners, 2.7% are family physicians assistants, as well as family physicians. 5.9 % of family physicians are family physicians. 39.7% of the physicians did not receive education for child abuse and neglect (CAAN), and 61.3% received education. 39,2 % of physicians encountered cases of child abuse and neglect. The rate of exploitation of abusive education is higher. 44.2 % of the physicians encountering the CAAN case reported that they were notified as judicial cases. Physicians who did not report the incident directly or indirectly stated that 27 % of them had not been informed about the notification and 21.6% of them did not give a report because they thought that the child's life would be adversely affected after the notification , and 21.6 % of them stated that they did not report because they did not suspect sufficiently from CAAN. 23.5 % of the physicians reported the existence of instructions and procedures for CAAN in the institution they were working with and 76.5 % of the physicians said that there is no instruction and procedure in the institution directed to the subject. The average score point for diagnosing symptoms and risks of child abuse and neglect was 3,90. The scores obtained by family physicians from DOSAROCAAN general scale and subscale do not show any statistically significant difference according to marital status, status of receiving education for CAAN, their studies and their specialization status. The average score of the physicians who encountered child abuse and neglect during their professional lives was found to be statistically significant as compared to the average of the points not encountering the case (p<0.001). Conclusion: The level of family physicians' knowledge and awareness of child abuse and neglect has been examined through the scale we applied. It has been determined that the family physicians lack knowledge and awareness about child abuse and negligence in their findings and that education activities are inadequate and should be structured and increased.