Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
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To improve detection of child abuse and neglect (CAN), many emergency departments use screening methods. Apart from diagnostic accuracy, possible harms of screening methods are important to consider, especially because most children are not abused and do not benefit from screening. We performed a systematic literature review to assess parents' opinions about CAN screening, in which we could only include 7 studies, all reporting that the large majority of participating parents favor screening. Recently, a complete physical examination (called "top-toe" inspection [TTI], a fully undressed inspection of the child) was implemented as a CAN screening method at the emergency department of a teaching hospital in The Netherlands. This study describes parents' opinions about the TTI. ⋯ Contrary to what is commonly believed, both in our systematic literature review and in our questionnaire study, the majority of participating parents agree with screening for CAN in general and with the TTI specifically. Sharing the results of this study with ED personnel and policy makers could take away prejudices about perceived disagreement of parents, thereby improving implementation of and adherence to CAN screening.
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The review questions that are featured in each of issue of JEN are based on the Emergency Nursing Core Curriculum and other pertinent resources to emergency nursing practice, pediatric and adult. These questions offer emergency nurses an opportunity to test their knowledge about their practice.