Curricular Limitations and Recommendations for Training Health Care Providers to Respond to Intimate Partner Violence: An Integrative Literature Review

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a well-known public health problem occurring worldwide. With a multisectoral approach being emphasized in addressing IPV, the health sector has a key role to play due to many IPV victims who appear in health facilities without their needs being met. A well-designed and implemented IPV curriculum is necessary for effectively training health care professionals to provide quality IPV care and related services. This integrative review was conducted to establish evidence for existing curricular limitations and recommendations for training health care providers to respond to IPV. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted for studies published from 2000 to 2020 in five databases (PubMed, Science Direct, Cochrane Library, Google, and Scholar). As a criterion, studies that reported curricular limitations in training health care providers/professionals to address IPV were included. A total of 198 studies were identified for screening, with 16 studies meeting the inclusion criteria and included in the review. Findings: Curricular limitations for IPV response training for health care providers were reported in the following areas (themes): time allocated for the training, amount of content in the existing curricula, institutional endorsement for the content, IPV response teachers/facilitators, teaching and learning strategies, and funding to support curricular implementation. Various recommendations to improving IPV response training were provided including guaranteeing the training in all courses, increasing academic capability to teach the content, allocation of funding to improve infrastructure for curriculum development and implementation, comprehensive approaches to teaching, and continuing education for health care providers.