An evidence-based advocacy intervention for women survivors of intimate partner violence in a public health setting

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health problem and occurs in all countries including Hong Kong. Women are significantly more likely to report being victimized by intimate partner than men. IPV can result in high personal and social costs in terms of personal health consequences, burden on the medical care and loss productivity for the society. Early and effective interventions for women survivors of IPV are utmost importance. Increasing the safety behaviours education to abused women is one of the aims of advocacy interventions that may prevent further abuse and increase the safety and well-being of those women. It is crucial for nurses to assess the effectiveness of the advocacy intervention in order to apply the best evidence into practice in the local settings. However, there are no specific interventions or guidelines for women survivors of IPV are available in Hong Kong local healthcare system including the STD clinics or the Social Hygiene Clinics. In this dissertation, a translational nursing research related to an effective advocacy intervention for women survivors of IPV is described.

The purposes of this study are (1) to conduct a systematic literature review on interventions to increase safety behaviours for women survivors of IPV; (2) to summarize and synthesize the data from the identified literatures; (3) to assess the implementation potential of the proposed innovation on advocacy intervention; (4) to develop an evidence-based practice guideline; (5) to develop an implementation plan; and (6) to develop an evaluation plan to assess the effectiveness of the proposed evidence-based guideline.

A systematic literature search was conducted and a total of nine studies were identified in the review. The level of evidence and critical appraisal of each selected study was criticized by using the grading system of Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN). After the integrative review, the implementation potential of the proposed innovation on advocacy intervention for women survivors of IPV was assessed in terms of different aspects, including target audience and setting, transferability, feasibility and cost-benefit ratio. Then an evidence-based guideline was developed based on the level of evidence with grades of recommendation stated. For the implementation plan was divided into two parts, the communication plan and the pilot study plan. After communicating with the different identified stakeholders and providing proper training programme to the innovators, a pilot study test was carried out for concrete information on the feasibility of the proposed innovation. Finally, an evaluation plan was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed innovation.

The aim of this dissertation is to increase the safety behaviours of the target population and to reduce further abuse. With the implementation of the evidence-based advocacy intervention, the women client’s knowledge on safety-promoting behaviours should be improved significantly thus to improve their health and also to increase their safety.