The transgenerational impact of child abuse. Health professionals' social and values

Abstract

Introduction: Child abuse is a worrying trend not only in our country but globally. The aim of the article is to present the adverse long-term consequences of child abuse, Adverse Childhood Experiences, which is a classified public health problem according to WHO. The attitude of primary care workers towards the prevention of abuse has a profound impact on the quality of prevention activities. Objective: To assess the knowledge and perceptions of paediatricians, midwives and paediatric nurses working in primary and specialised care about the topic child abuse. Contextualising value judgements and societal perceptions of child abuse in order to break the transgenerational effects. Method: A self-completed online survey was conducted with 49 structured, standardised questions, the data provided insights about the socio-economic status of respondents, their attitudes to the issue of child abuse, their perceptions of the seriousness of the issue and their obligation to report it under the law. Results: Based on our analysis on a sample of 195 respondents, we can conclude that health care workers perceive abuse as clearly harmful, yet it is perceived as a common phenomenon in our country. Nearly one fifth of respondents believe that society is accepting and mildly judges the phenomenon. A significant difference in the perception of abuse by educational level was found between the high and low educated respondents. We also found significant differences in signalling functioning by type of workplace location (p = 0.020) and job category (p = 0.044). Conclusion: The results highlighted that preventive action by health care workers is the key to breaking the transgenerational effects. The authors would like to draw attention to the fact that the improvement of the quality of care depends significantly on the knowledge of professionals. Continuous basic and further training and in-depth knowledge development among primary care workers are necessary.