to Screen for Domestic Violence in Family Practice

PURPOSE We undertook a study to compare 3 ways of administering brief domestic violence screening questionnaires: self-administered questionnaire, medical staff interview, and physician interview. METHODS We conducted a randomized trial of 3 screening protocols for domes-tic violence in 4 urban family medicine practices with mostly minority patients. We randomly assigned 523 female patients, aged 18 years or older and cur-rently involved with a partner, to 1 of 3 screening protocols. Each included 2 brief screening tools: HITS and WAST-Short. Outcome measures were domestic violence disclosure, patient and clinician comfort with the screening, and time spent screening. RESULTS Overall prevalence of domestic violence was 14%. Most patients (93.4%) and clinicians (84.5%) were comfortable with the screening questions and method of administering them. Average time spent screening was 4.4 min-utes. Disclosure rates, patient and clinician comfort with screening, and time spent screening were similar among the 3 protocols. In addition, WAST-Short was validated in this sample of minority women by comparison with HITS and with the 8-item WAST. CONCLUSIONS Domestic violence is common, and we found that most patients and clinicians are comfortable with domestic violence screening in urban family medi-cine settings. Patient self-administered domestic violence screening is as effective as clinician interview in terms of disclosure, comfort, and time spent screening. Ann Fam Med 2007;5:430-435. DOI: 10.1370/afm.716