MedEdPORTAL (Dec 2009)
Family Violence Interactive Experience
Abstract
Abstract This 4-hour session gives medical students experience in diagnosing, counseling, and reporting, as appropriate, abuse of children, partners, and elders. The session is made up of three components. First, students learn directly how violence has affected the lives of three individuals (the survivors of violence panel), representing the spectrum of family violence (FV). Next, the group is divided into thirds, and each smaller group spends 40 minutes on a vignette related to child abuse, partner abuse, or elder abuse/caregiver burnout. In each group, a few students volunteer to conduct a 15-minute interview with a standardized patient in the presence of a faculty-coach and the rest of the students. After the interview, the students are divided into even smaller groups to debrief with faculty facilitators about the vignette. The final component of the session is a panel of FV-related professionals (e.g., attorney, social worker, police officer) who discuss issues from various perspectives (e.g., legality, reporting, security, community resources). After the session, students are asked to write a narrative describing how the session was beneficial to their knowledge base; their attitudes about child, partner, and elder abuse; and their self-awareness and personal growth. This FV session was developed and has been presented on three separate intersession dates from June 2008 to May 2009, with an average of 94 students participating each time. Overall, evaluations indicated that the intersession was very well received. On a 5-point Likert scale with 5 being excellent, the session's individual sections were rated as follows: survivors of violence panel: 4.4, child abuse fishbowl exercise and discussion: 4.2, child abuse small-group discussion: 4.2, partner abuse fishbowl exercise and discussion: 4.1, partner abuse small-group discussion: 4.2, elder abuse/caregiver burnout fishbowl exercise and discussion: 4.3, elder abuse/caregiver burnout small-group discussion: 4.3, professional panel Q&A: 4.2, and overall evaluation of FV session: 4.3. Further evidence of the effectiveness of the session was found in the evaluation comments.
Keywords
