Background

Violence against women (VAW) and sexual assault are major problems in the real-world scenario. There exist lacunae among medical practitioners regarding response to VAW. Despite increasing awareness and improved sensitivity, teaching students how to handle VAW is a neglected part of medical education, which this project addresses.

Materials and Methods

A one-day educational program using the “Caring for women subjected to violence: a WHO curriculum for training health-care providers” tool was conducted for thirty interns. Interactive lectures, small group discussion and role plays were conducted, using the guidance in the curriculum, in the presence of observers. Pre-designed, pre-validated questionnaire (10 stems; 85 individual items) was utilized for assessment. Pre-program and post-program scores were compared using the paired t test.

Results

Background knowledge about VAW (3.67–5.78, p value < 0.001), Knowledge about warnings signs of VAW (6.7–8.83, p value 0.002), Skill entities—Ability to communicate to survivors of VAW—initiation (2.43–3.2, p value 0.04), ability to communicate to survivors of VAW- Enquiry (6.53–7.86, p value < 0.001), ability to utilize systems support in response to VAW (3.03–5.14, p value < 0.01) and the understanding how much a health-care practitioner’s own beliefs impact their own response towards VAW survivors (29.2–19.8, p value < 0.0001) showed statistically significant improvement. Baseline scores about beliefs about gender roles of both males and females were quite high suggestive a very mature population. Overall self-perception of preparedness towards response to VAW showed an overt increase (19.14–32.75, p value < 0.0001), pointing towards the magnitude of success of the program.

Conclusion

A one-day educational intervention is feasible and improves medical graduate’s response to VAW. WHO- LIVES curriculum is suitable for educating interns about VAW. This study could be the starting point for inclusion of a formal VAW program in the medical curriculum in India.

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