ABSTRACT
Privacy beliefs associated with the family impede physicians’ response to domestic violence. Attitudes and beliefs related to the private sphere in which domestic violence takes place also emerge as salient in research on primary care physicians’ attitudes toward domestic violence. Physicians’ reported concern about transgressing privacy norms in domestic violence cases stands in stark contrast to the apparent ease with which they routinely intrude in many other areas of patients’ private lives. Domestic violence was a legally sanctioned feature of the patriarchal family, and courts generally upheld the husband’s authority to administer “moderate” punishment, usually defined as anything short of life-threatening or permanent injury. Intensive domestic violence training should be a mandatory feature of medical education, especially in specialties where physicians more frequently encounter abused patients. There are reasons not only to include domestic violence training in medical education, but to devote special attention to violence against women.
