Victim Protection in Medicine – Exploiting practical knowledge of medical staff to enhance the multi-professional contact with victims of domestic violence

ended

Domestic Violence (DV) remains a persistent problem in all European member states and represents one of the greatest health risks women are exposed to over the course of their lives. While significant advances have been achieved over the past decades, many victims of DV continue to experience substantial barriers to access existing support networks and remain both undetected and unassisted. In many cases, the only point of contact to a system of support available to victims of DV, resides in the medical sector, when victims are being treated for injury or illness, during routine checkups, or in the interactions with midwives during pregnancy. However, the medical profession is often not an active partner in national responder networks, and the medical sector is regularly lacking institutional and individual sensitization and training on the topic of DV. Responding to the widespread need for sustainable medical sector training, VIPROM will develop specific DV curricula for medical doctors, nurses, midwives and medical students. In 5 European member states, VIPROM will conduct train-the-trainer programs and pilot trainings with approx. 425 participants. Crucially, the development of the curricula 2 case studies of good practice cases for sustainable organizational integration of DV training in the medical sector. This will enable the project to provide medical practitioners with stakeholder-specific training materials, methods, and practical guidelines for the sustainable integration of the curricula in medical institutions across all European member states beyond the runtime of the project. To facilitate the rollout beyond project partner countries, VIPROM will enable the participation in the curricula for all European member states and beyond, through a 10-part Webinar series with 400 additional participants as well as the dissemination of the Curricula and implementation roadmap to over 150 specialized victim’s protection organizations in over 46 countries.