Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Child Abuse Diagnosis and Reporting Among a Group of Egyptian Dentists: A Cross Sectional Study
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 已完成
- 入组人数
- 196
- 试验地点
- 1
- 主要终点
- Assessing Egyptian dentists' knowledge about child abuse reporting.
研究概览
简要总结
Child abuse is defined as "Any act of commission or omission that endangers or impairs child's physical, sexual, or emotional health and development". According to The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Child physical abuse CPA is defined as "The intentional use of physical force against a child that result in, or has the potential to result in, physical injury".
Child abuse and neglect may occur in any family, and it isn't confined to certain geographic, ethnic, or socioeconomic background. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimation, around forty million children suffer from different forms of abuse, and require health and social care.
WHO has estimated that in year 2000 nearly fifty-seven thousand children under fifteen years old were dead because of abuse, with the highest rate in children between zero to four years old. In 2014, WHO estimated that 23% of children worldwide were subjected to physical abuse.
Dentists are the best to detect children who are at abuse risk, since more than fifty percent of abuse injuries occur at head and neck region, and they are the first to see and treat orofacial region. Studies have shown that while dentists are in a good position to detect and report abuse, few of them do report abuse cases.
The main causes of not reporting CPA are lack of adequate history, inability, and hesitancy in diagnosing the abuse, fear that it may affect the reputation of their clinic, worry about what will happen to the child and his family, and unfamiliarity with child protection policy in their workplace.
The Egyptian law obligates dentists to report any suspected case of child abuse. Many studies have been published assessing dentists' knowledge and practice of CPA diagnosis and reporting. However, to our knowledge, there are no published data available about Egyptian dentists' cognition of CPA signs and diagnosis, and their actual participation in reporting suspected cases.
详细描述
Infants and young children are easy targets for abuse. Their challenging behaviour, defencelessness, physical weakness, and inability to escape from angry parent. They are also very young, and may not even know how to describe the injury cause. This adds additional burden to the dentist to diagnose and report such cases.
The damage that will inflict upon the child whether it is developmental, physical or mental will depend mainly on the child's age, and the scope of the abuse. The intervention to protect children isn't the responsibility of a single institute or profession, it's a shared community duty.
Risk factors for child to be subjected to abuse depend mainly on age and sex. Younger children are at greater risk for physical abuse, while older children who reached adolescence are subjected more to sexual abuse. Boys are victims of beating or physical punishment, while girls are subjected to infanticide, sexual abuse, educational and nutritional neglect. Other risk factors include poverty, being raised by single parent or very young parents, and presence of other violent relationship at home.
Studies have shown that orofacial injuries are common in case of physical abuse. From fifty to seventy-seven percent of abused children had suffered from orofacial injuries. This high percent to the head, face, and neck regions enhances the theory that easy accessibility and psychological importance of these area make them frequent target to the abuser.
Orofacial injuries due to physical abuse may include bruising, contusion, abrasions or laceration to soft tissue, dental fractures and dislocation, dental avulsion, maxillary and mandibular fractures. Skin injuries include ecchymosis and excoriations, which are commonly associated with abrasions, contusions or lacerations. These injures may be produced by natural ways like fists or slaps, instruments like household utensils, and ligature instruments like belts and shoelace.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Observational
- 观察模型
- Other
- 时间视角
- Cross Sectional
入排标准
- 性别
- All
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Staff members at all departments in Faculty of Dentistry, Cairo University.
- •Master's and PhD candidates enrolled at different specialities.
排除标准
- •Intern dentists.
- •Dentists who don't have a work permission in Egypt.
- •Dentists who will refuse to participate.
结局指标
主要结局
Assessing Egyptian dentists' knowledge about child abuse reporting.
时间窗: One month.
Questioning if the dentist is able to report a suspected case of child abuse, using trichotomous scale (Yes/No/Don't know)
Assessing Egyptian dentists' attitude and practice towards child abuse.
时间窗: One month
Assessment of Egyptian dentists' attitude towards child abuse reporting, and practice of reporting, using trichotomous scale (Yes/No/Don't know)
Assessing Egyptian dentists' knowledge about child abuse diagnosis.
时间窗: One month.
Questions about the ability of dentist to diagnose abuse, using trichotomous scale (Yes/No/Don't know)
次要结局
未报告次要终点
研究者
Nora Magdy Mahmoud Elsayed
Master's candidate
Cairo University