Abstract Body

Background and purpose:
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread public health problem of epidemic proportions with serious consequences. 30% women will suffer IPV in their lifetime and these numbers tend to increase during any type of emergency, also in this Covid-19 pandemic. Family doctors may be the first or only point of contact, as victims may be reluctant or unable to seek alternative sources of assistance but there is a gap between best-practice guidelines and actual medical practitioner behaviour.

Methods:
The aim of this project is to develop, implement and investigate the efficacy of an e-learning programme to improve family doctors’ responses to IPV, using a randomised-controlled trial approach that involves two arms, randomly assigned (intervention and control group). Ethics approval: (ERP20-065-C E-DOVER).
The Physician Readiness to Manage IPV Survey is used to assess physicians’ previous knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and skills pre-training, post-training and after 6 months.

RESULTS:
152 participants (86,8% women, 12,5% men) took part in the pre-training test and 145 completed the survey. 56% of them had previous training on GV but they were not feeling adequately prepared to face this type of health problems in their consultations. After the training, there was a significant increase of their readiness to manage it. Final results will be presented at the Conference.

Conclusions: E-learning has become an increasingly popular in medical and continuing medical education and in this current situation, traditional training is very challenging to provide. Interactive approaches can be very effective as this study has shown.