In rural Iowa, homes are far apart, not everyone has a telephone and weeks may go by without neighbor seeing neighbor. Cowen accompanied the local sheriff to the woman s home the next day. As we were prying the nails out of the door, the man showed up. It is no accident that this young mother chose to confide in a nurse. Nurses generally are the ones invading the patient s physical boundaries, by virtue of their role in physical assessment.
Nurses get that crack in the door that other professionals don t.
The ability of nurses to successfully intervene in domestic violence is borne out by a number of studies. A complicated issue Women are frequently the victims of violence, but so are people with disabilities, the elderly and children. In short, domestic violence is a complicated issue. Even defining it can be difficult. Therefore, nurses need specific training to successfully intervene, said Christina Walsh, technical assistance coordinator for the National Training Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence, based in Austin, Texas.