relation: http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/30386/
title: "It's All in the How": adolescent and young adult women's recommendations for establishing comfort within family planning providers' communication about and assessment for intimate partner violence
creator: Zelazny, Sarah
description: Context and Public Health Importance: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious public health problem that disproportionately affects adolescent women seeking family planning services compared to general population estimates. Current clinical guidelines recommend routine assessment to identify and respond to IPV to prevent and attend to the negative health outcomes that are caused by violence victimization. There are gaps in the literature on how providers should communicate with their patients about sensitive issues like IPV and how to establish comfort for their patients. Methods: Clinic staff at 5 western Pennsylvania family planning clinics received communication skill-based and knowledge-based training as part of an exploratory study of lPV assessment. We audio recorded clinic encounters for participating providers and patients. We interviewed patient participants about their experiences with the providers' IPV assessment and they reflected on their audio-recorded clinic encounters.  Results: The mean age for the 44 participants was 22.8 years old. Participants named "comfort" as a main component for discussing and disclosing IPV in the clinical setting. The sub-themes associated with how to create patient comfort include: Build the patient-provider relationship, Provider should communicate like a friend/be on the patient level, Patient needs to feel cared for by provider, and Appropriate timing and space. Conclusion: Methods for establishing patient comfort via communication should be incorporated into and examined within sensitive healthcare areas such as IPV and can be extended to HIV, palliative, and oncological care to improve patient health outcomes. Further research on the subthemes of comfort and how they differ in patient populations and settings should be conducted.
date: 2016-11-27
type: University of Pittsburgh ETD
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
language: en
identifier: http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/30386/1/Zelazny_ETDThesis_12_2016.pdf
identifier:   Zelazny, Sarah  (2016) "It's All in the How": adolescent and young adult women's recommendations for establishing comfort within family planning providers' communication about and assessment for intimate partner violence.  Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.    (Unpublished)