Knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding child maltreatment amongst Iranian medical students through internship course: an 18-month longitudinal study

BACKGROUND: Child maltreatment has been a major worldwide problem and has remained a persistent public health challenge in all countries. Physicians have a significant role in the prevention and intervention of child maltreatment. An educated physician that can effectively identify and report child maltreatment can fill one of the most significant gaps in reducing child abuse. This study was performed to examine the knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding child maltreatment among Iranian medical students through an internship course. METHOD: All the medical students (235 students) of the Iran University of Medical Sciences who passed the internship entrance exam in the 2019–2020 academic year participated in this study. The participants completed a 49-item scale questionnaire built by combining three other validated questionnaires that evaluate their attitude, knowledge, and practice skills in the first month of their internship course and then completed the same questionnaire 18 months later, at the end-point of the internship period. RESULTS: One-hundred thirty nine (59.1%) participants were female, and 96 (40.9%) were male. The mean age of the subjects was 24.35 ± 0.76. Only 7 (3%) of them formerly received any education about child maltreatment. There was a significant improvement in scores of the knowledge of prevention (p-value = 0.001), the practice of prevention (p-value < 0.001) and the general subscale of the practice section (p-value < 0.001) during the internship course. However, the performance of participants decreased significantly in the subscales of the attitude towards diagnosis (p-value = 0.001) and the attitude towards reporting (p-value < 0.001) of child maltreatment. At the end of the study, the result of graduated physicians was: The total knowledge and attitude of participants were satisfactory, and the majority were at reasonable levels. Although in the practice subscale, 70.6% of the participants didn’t identify, 84.7% didn’t refer, and 86.4% didn’t report a child abuse case in the past year. CONCLUSION: The knowledge and attitude of Iranian physicians regarding child maltreatment are at a satisfactory level. Although, the practice level has deficiencies. In addition, our findings show that Iranian interns have a shallow experience regarding child maltreatment, particularly despite the higher scores in attitude and knowledge, which can be the reason for deficiencies in the practice level. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-023-01988-9.