Barriers to child abuse identification and reporting

Abstract

Child abuse is an increasing phenomenon globally and is divided into four dimensions: physical, sexual, emotional and negligence. As in all countries in the world, child abuse is underreported in Arab countries, including Palestine. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the potential barriers to child abuse identification and reporting by the Palestinian nurses. A total of 84 nurses from a major hospital in Ramallah city in Palestine constituted the sample of this study and returned the distributed questionnaire. The majority of the sample were young junior nurses holding BSc degrees. Interestingly, none of the nurses had received any training about child abuse. Almost 70% of nurses think that child abuse is a problem in the society, but that it is underreported due to different factors such as being concerned about child abuse identification, training about abuse identification, lack of time for identification of the abuse and child abuse not being considered a medical problem; these were the barriers most identified by the nurses. In conclusion, the presence of a well-organized system to deal with this phenomenon seems crucial. Protecting children from being abused is not the responsibility of a single agency or a governmental institution. Clear, concise and structured child protection policy is necessary to enable nurses to report and deal with abuse cases and to improve the effectiveness of reporting and caring for such cases.