Increased Amounts of Education for those Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect

This article is focusing on the problems nurses face when attempting to report knowing if a child is being abuse and neglected and the reason and what barriers nurses face with. This paper will include information that was covered in the article, explain how the research was conducted, and provide ways to improve in this area when becoming a nurse and being faced with the same issues. It will also have suggestions and ideas on how future research may be implemented into nursing education. Finally, the author's interpretation on whether or not the extra education is going to improve the outcome of missed child abuse and neglect cases.

Key Points

The purpose of this study was to understand why so many children that are being abused and the reporting of child abuse and neglect are not being done.

According to Piltz, child abuse is any abusive act that causes physical harm to a child and neglect is the adults failure to provide adequate care of the child. This study was done to figure out what and why there are so many suspected cases of child abuse and neglect that go unreported. The way they did their research on this was by the use of surveys. The surveys were given to staff in several different countries and that information was used to compile the evidence found. Nurses are required to report any suspected cases of abuse or neglect, but many cases are missed due to lack of education regarding signs and symptoms to look for. Their research shows that nurses that are afraid of retaliation or if they had no physical evidence they tended to not report anything.

Analysis of Research

The two methods used to for researching a medical analysis, they are qualitive and quantitive methods. In quantitive research there are two variables, the first one is a group of people who receive the intervention and the second is the group that does not receive the intervention (control group). In qualitative research it is based more on subjective information. It is gathered through interviews or direct observation and is a lived experience by the patient, (Knecht, 2017). The research conducted for the barriers that inhibit nurses reporting suspected cases of child abuse and neglect used both the qualitative and quantative method. It used questionnaires and interviews to find out why nurses seemed to fail reporting suspected cases of child abuse. Information was gathered from the nurse's point of view and they gave the reasons why they tended to hesitate making allegations of child abuse and neglect. Some of the studies done were looking at identify variables that affected nurses reporting, understanding the nurses knowledge on abuse and how they react, and knowing if nurses understand signs and symptoms of abuse.

The areas that nurses were filling out questionaries' indicating and whether or not the reason why they either made their report on child abuse or they avoided reporting abuse. This research was conducted on many different countries, with each one focusing on what barriers nurses need to overcome, so that future teaching could cover the education needed to fulfill a nurse's responsibility to report. The countries that were involved in this study were; United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan, and Canada. Some of the reason for failure to report were: nurses had a previous bad experience when reporting abuse, not enough training, and not being sure what signs or symptoms are involved in emotional abuse (a form of child abuse).

The research conclusion shows that it was successful. Further education and training can be given to help nurses know what signs and symptoms to look for. All nurses are responsible for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect. This will be a great change because there are many times that a child slips through the cracks because someone missed a sign or symptom of abuse.

Evaluations & Recommendations

The techniques used in this article provided insight as to what influenced a nurse's reason for reporting abuse. The research used went over many questionnaires. The Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing handed out surveys to medical facilities in order to find what barriers there were for the nurses that have to report child abuse and neglect. The research they implemented goes over some of the findings regarding the issues with reporting child abuse or neglect. It shows that the issue of children slipping through the cracks are largely due to nurses not educated in signs of abuse and neglect. According to the article Barriers that inhibit nurses reporting suspected cases of child abuse and neglect, they did a study that included different countries such as; the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan, and Canada. They used questionnaires to collect the data needed for this research and came up with a conclusion of how to address the issues they had found. This paper will go over these problems they found within their study.

Implementation

The results show that by implementing interventions such as advanced education, can greatly improve reporting outcomes they need to find a way to implement them into nursing practices. Increasing training on abuse and making it a requirement for all undergraduate and post-graduate nurses and for those in the medical field already would need to go through continued education, this would be the best intervention possible. All nurses would need to know the different signs to look for in an abused child. Nurses don't seem to have trouble with the physical signs that are seen, they have more trouble identifying the signs that are not readily seen.

Professional Response

The authors of this article believe that by introducing mandatory education children will be protected. The researchers used a questionnaire and interview technique, checking for variables and comparing them with the rest. The article has good points about how to help reduce the barriers of reporting child abuse. The authors inform us that many times there are missed abuse or neglect are overlooked, for those that are have mandatory reporting. The interventions would be implemented throughout the teaching process and adding in continued additional teaching for those already in the medical field. The research shows that more education would be key in preventing roadblocks to reporting child abuse. The additional education and supplemental information would reduce some of the barriers involved in reporting child abuse and neglect. Abuse and neglect are a huge concern for those that are not able to speak for themselves and it is paramount to do the extra education to get over the hurdle and protect the children.

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