Opinions and practices of the nurses facing with cases of child abuse- neglect: Pilot Study

Aim: This study has been carried out in order to determine the diagnosis methods of the nurses working in pediatrics department for child abuse – neglect cases as well as their level of knowledge about treatment and rehabilitation and their approaches when they encounter with abuse and neglect cases. Tools and Methods: Research has been carried out by including 25 pediatrics nurses working in child and emergency services of a hospital and who are voluntary to participate in the research. Also, semi-structured qualitative interviews have been carried out with five people who want to participate in a more exclusive interview than the facts and who accept the usage of voice recording. In the analysis of data, SPSS 16 program and simple thematic analysis have been used. Findings: 23 of the facts have encountered with the cases having all the characteristics of emotional, physical, sexual abuse and child neglect in their working lives while three of the facts have stated that they have knowledge about the procedure to be applied when they encounter with such cases; 9 of them have stated that they have previously been trained about the issues of abuse and neglect and 21 of them have stated that training is required. Conclusion: It has been realized that nurses do not use this training to diagnose abuse and neglect cases but they inform the doctors or polices of these cases when they encounter with abuse cases. In qualitative interviews, nurses have stated that they are responsible from diagnosing abuse but they cannot fulfill this responsibility because of their workload and they approach towards these cases in a more emotional manner compared to the other patients.