None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Intimate partner abuse is a common hidden problem for women attending general practice. It has major emotional and physical consequences. This project aims to evaluate if an intervention in general practice involving screening for intimate partner abuse and feedback to GPs, a training program for GPs, a brief counselling intervention for women and practice organisational change increases abused women’s safety planning and behaviours, mental health and quality of life. The project also aims to increase women’s readiness for change, comfort to discuss abuse and health provider inquiry about safety, and determine if such a program is cost effective. The pilot study is complete. The main study involved sending 20000 women (16-50 years) a screening survey from 55 general practices in Victoria, Australia. Women who screen positive to being ‘afraid’ of their partner or ex-partner in the last 12 months and indicate an interest in being involved in next stage were invited to participate. Those in the intervention group were invited to attend their GP for up to 6 sessions of brief counselling, and be followed for 2 years with surveys at baseline, and 6 and 12 and 24 months following the invitation to see the GP. This study used a cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate the intervention. General practitioners were randomised either to be intensively trained to deliver the intervention and their practice systems improved for care of abused women or to be briefly trained to ensure minimum safe practice and deliver ‘usual care’. Outcomes of this project include evidence of the effectiveness of this model to increase safety of women and their mental health and quality of life, and an updated continuing professional development curriculum will be available. The 24 month follow up (weave II) consists of: A. 2 year follow up to assess the longer term effect of the weave intervention on women’s experience of abuse; their quality of life; mental and physical health; and use of services. B. Economic modeling to estimate impact of measured outcomes on women’s lifetime health and wellbeing and on lifetime costs and savings for Australian health care and society. C. Qualitative process evaluation to understand context of extent to which weave is effective.
Interventions
20000 women (16-50 years) from 40 general practices (500 per practice) in Victoria, Australia, will be mailed a screening survey. Women who screen positive to being ‘afraid’ of their partner or ex-partner in the last 12 months will be invited to the next [intervention] stage of the project. The intervention will be multifacted and practice-based involving a professional, patient-oriented and organisational component. For GPs there will be 8 hour training program involving feedback based on the s
20000 women (16-50 years) from 40 general practices (500 per practice) in Victoria, Australia, will be mailed a screening survey. Women who screen positive to being ‘afraid’ of their partner or ex-partner in the last 12 months will be invited to the next [intervention] stage of the project. The intervention will be multifacted and practice-based involving a professional, patient-oriented and organisational component. For GPs there will be 8 hour training program involving feedback based on the screening of their patients, training in guidelines for IPA management, long-distance education as well as interactive training sessions using simulated patients to improve counselling skills. The patients will subsequently receive 3-6 sessions of brief counselling from their GP. Each session will be 30 minutes in duration and conducted over the phone or on a one-to-one basis. Patients will be surveyed at baseline and then followed for one year after the invitation for counselling from the GP with surveys at 6 and 12 months. The final element of the intervention involves organisational change to promote awareness about IPA throughout the practice through pamphlets and posters.
Sponsors
Associate Professor Kelsey Hegarty
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
16 Years to 50 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
GP participants must practice in urban or rural areas Victoria, Australia within 150km of Melbourne; have at least 200 women aged 16-50 years that they saw in the last 12 months; use computerised patient registers. To be eligible for screening, patient participants must be female; aged 16-50 years; and have seen the participating GP in the previous 12 months. Women who indicate in the screening survey that they have been afraid of their partner/ex-partner in the previous 12 months and who would like to hear more about the weave project will be eligible for the intervention stage of the study. These women will be contacted by phone based on the information they provided in the survey and invited to participate.
Exclusion criteria
GPs: GPs who have a majority of non-English speaking patients or who have not worked at the practice in the last year are excluded. Patients with severe mental or physical health problems, severe learning disabilities or poor comprehension of English language compromising capacity to provide informed consent are excluded or where women are no longer attending that GP/have moved away from the locality.
Outcome results
None listed