Lifetime intimate partner violence exposure, attitudes and comfort among Canadian health professions students

BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread public health problem and training of health professions students has become common. Understanding students' prior knowledge, attitudes and personal exposure to IPV will aid educators in designing more effective curriculum. As interprofessional educational efforts proliferate, understanding differences across disciplines will be critical. FINDINGS: Students in the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Rehabilitation at a university in Ontario attend an annual daylong interprofessional IPV training. To measure perceived role and comfort with IPV and prior personal exposure, we administered a brief Likert scale survey to a convenience sample of students over three years. 552 students completed the survey; the overall response rate was 73%. The majority (82%) agreed that it was their role to intervene in cases of IPV; however Rehabilitation students expressed lower overall comfort levels than did their peers in other schools (p < .0001). Gender, age and prior training on the subject were not significant predictors of comfort. Seven percent reported lifetime IPV and one-fifth had witnessed IPV, but these exposures did not predict comfort in adjusted logistic regression models. CONCLUSION: While the majority of professional students believe it is their role to address IPV in clinical practice, comfort level varied significantly by field of study. More than one fifth of the students reported some personal exposure to IPV. However this did not impact their level of comfort in addressing this issue. Educators need to take students' preexisting attitudes and personal exposure into account when planning curriculum initiatives in this area.