Identifying Intimate Partner Violence: an Intervention Study in Health Care Using a Standardised Questionnaire and Virtual Patients

The project is expected to last for three years and is based on a quasi-experimental design. The outcome is the registration of the number of individuals exposed to intimate partner violence, which will be investigated before and after intervention. Qualitative focus group interviews with participating healthcare professionals will also be included to investigate which intervention they perceive as most effective in increasing the ability to identify people exposed to intimate partner violence. The project will be carried out at different care units in primary care (health centers, midwifery clinics, youth clinics), and healthcare professionals will be randomized based on the following three interventions:

1. Use of a standardized questionnaire.
2. Training in asking questions about intimate partner violence via training with tailored virtual patients.
3. A combination of interventions 1 and 2.

To measure the outcome of the project, the research group will use registry data (health centers/youth clinics) and a protocol (midwifery clinics) to record the number of patients exposed to intimate partner violence.

The research subjects in this project are primarily participating healthcare professionals involved in the interventions. The nature of data from the research subjects primarily consists of background information such as demographic data (e.g., age, level of education, occupational category, gender, professional experience), and whether healthcare professionals have undergone any training on IPV. This data should not be used in any analyses but only constitutes a descriptive description of the research subjects when data will be presented in scientific papers. Qualitative focus group interviews with participating healthcare professionals will also be included to investigate which intervention they experience as most effective in increasing the ability to identify people exposed to intimate partner violence.

Registry data for patients who have visited health centers and youth clinics will be collected retrospectively from the Center for Health Data in Region Stockholm. Sociodemographic information about visitors to health centers and youth clinics is obtained from Statistics Sweden's population register; however, names and social security numbers are not conveyed to the research group. Pseudonymization is carried out, and the code key is stored at the Centre for Health Data. In the protocols, midwifery clinics will note the number of patients who state exposure to violence in close relationships, reasons for seeking treatment, support measures taken by healthcare staff, and whether the patient is exposed to violence.