Distinguishing Diagnosis: Project of Child Neglect and Abuse

Name of the activity: Distinguishing Diagnosis: Project of Child Neglect and Abuse

Country/NMO: Turkey (TurkMSIC)

Program: Ethics & Human Rights in Health

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education. Education on health issues for specific societal groups, either in the form of projects (set of tasks for a certain group over a fixed period of time), events (something notable that happens) or conferences (form meeting about ideas related to a particular topic, usually over several days).

General description:

It is very important for health workers to be informed in order to prevent child neglect and abuse. We organize trainings for medical students to raise this level of knowledge and awareness.

The content of the trainings:

1. Definition and Characteristics of Child Neglect and Abuse

2. Properties of Physical Abuse and Differential Diagnosis

3. Neglect and Emotional Abuse, Von Munchausen by Proxy

4. Mental Consequences of Child Neglect and Abuse and Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome

5. Techniques in Meeting with Abused Children

6. The Justice System and the Process of Notification in Child Neglect and Abuse

In addition to trainings, we have activities for awareness-raising :

Video work

Online training sequences

Informative newsletters

Social media campaigns

Activity map etc.

Focus area:

Human Rights for Medical Professionals in daily clinical settings

Problem statement:

Health care professionals have a key role to play in identifying, treating and referring cases of abuse and neglect and in reporting suspected cases of maltreatment to the appropriate authorities. One of the reasons of not to come out child neglect and abuse is the health experts have insufficient knowledge and awareness. The main problem we focus on is the insufficient knowledge, skill and awareness of physician candidates and health workers about distinguishing diagnoses.

Target groups:

Medical students, Healthcare Students

Beneficiaries:

Medical students, Healthcare Students, Children

Objectives and indicators of success:

Goal 1: To educate medical students about distinguishing diagnosis.

Indicator 1: Number of local committees in our NMO which organised Education of Distinguishing Diagnosis.

Goal 2: To increase knowledge of medical students about distinguishing diagnoses of child neglect and abuse.

Indicator 2: Sending Pre-test and final test (questions are same) to the participants and evaluate the difference between answers.

Goal 3: Raising awareness about child neglect and abuse.

Indicator 3a: Seeing the variety of the activities carried out in our NMO and increased participation in these activities

Indicator 3b: Increase number of people we reached through social media campaigns and video works.

Methodology:

For Goal 1 and 2 :

To organize Training of distinguishing diagnosis for medical students in medical faculties. These trainings have a specific curriculum of 6 sessions. Sessions can optionally be organized in 6 weeks, 3 days or 1 day. With these sessions, students will be learning about how to recognize the marks of child neglect and abuse.

For Goal 3: Campaigns on special days: activity map, video work, etc. Online training on youtube to reach out to the audience except medical students. Making a bulletin which includes activities about child neglect and abuse in local committees.

Plans for evaluation:

Participants fill a pre-test before the sessions. There is one test to be filled at the beginning of all training. This pre-test contains information targeted to give in sessions. Whereby this test is evaluated knowledge of participants about these topics before the session.

There is a final test for evaluate the changing in the knowledge of participants. Final test is same as pre-test. If participants learnt the information , they can easily answer the questions in final test.

We will get a success graph from the changes in the participants’ tests in all the trainings organized. This chart will tell us about the efficiency of the trainings.