Reviewer's report
Title:Barriers among Danish women and general practitioners to raising the
issue of intimate partner violence in general practice: a qualitative study
Version:5Date:15 April 2014
Reviewer: Maria Papadakaki
Reviewer's report:
Many thanks to the authors for their time and effort in revising the manuscript.
The revised draft is much improved and many of my previous comments have
been successfully met. There are still some pending issues that need to be
addressed before publication as follows:
Major compulsory revisions
General
1. Both the abstract and the manuscript need to be checked by a native speaker.
There are many language problems throughout the manuscript.
2. “Practise” should be “Practice” in several points.
3. The authors should avoid generalizations throughout the manuscript as their
sample size does not allow that. e.g. “Medical doctors lack training in
communication and, in general, lack knowledge about domestic violence”. They
should always specify that e.g. “the medical doctors that participated in this study
……” instead of referring to medical doctors in general. The same applies for
women.
Introduction
1. The introduction still misses information from literature on physicians’ barriers
to inquiry. The authors have already included literature on women’s attitudes
towards inquiry but there is no reference to what has been found so far in terms
of physicians’ attitudes and barriers. Reference to training interventions and
outcomes is relevant but should be limited as the current study does not test a
training intervention.
2. “……examining women, partner violence, and general practitioners in
Denmark”. This is vague and needs some improvement.
3. “whether routine inquiry should be implemented in the Danish context”. I think
the study offers information on the acceptance and attitudes of different groups
towards inquiry…..
Results
1. The presentation of the results is made both by category of respondent and by
theme. It would be preferable not to have both in the results. If maintained better
include a subtitle to increase clarity.
2. The authors should consider reducing the information in each respondent
group in order for it to be more focused.
3. The authors should control for repetitions and pointless summarizing within the
results.
Discussion
The discussion section seems to be too long and many conclusive remarks are
repeated. Removing repetitions (not necessary in wording but in meaning) and
introducing a number of subheadings for each finding or distinct piece of
information would help the readers. Two subheadings are too few to capture the
information included in the discussion. The authors should control again for
repetitions and pointless summarizing.
Conclusion
1. The authors should consider using more moderate language and avoid
generalizations and strong statements. The sample of GPs is too small to
conclude all these.
Minor essential revisions
Table 1
“What is your attitude towards routinely asking about domestic violence?”
It is not an appropriate way to assess attitudes….
Table 2
1. There is missing information. Not all participants are included in categories.
2. More age groups could be created in order to indicate the age distribution. The
range is very broad and the information on the age is vague as it is.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'