Paramedic family violence response skills lacking

VICTORIAN paramedics should be trained to recognise and help victims deal with family violence, an international emergency conference has been told.

VICTORIAN paramedics should be trained to recognise and help victims deal with family violence, an international emergency conference has been told.

A push to increase ambulance officer’s ability to support and refer family violence victims to help has come after Monash University research found only three in 100 ­Australian paramedics were trained to deal with such cases.

As frontline healthcare workers, ambulance officers could make a significant difference, Dr Simon Sawyer said. But evidence presented at the world’s largest paramedic conference, in Nashville this week, revealed very few were equipped with skills to respond.

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Monash’s Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice has now instituted the world’s first evidence-based guideline to teach paramedics how to recognise and respond to family violence patients.

There is a push to increase ambulance officer’s ability to support and refer family violence victims to help.

“There is not really anyone who can tell you exactly what you are supposed to teach people and how they are supposed to work,” Dr Sawyer said.

“It is one thing to say ‘we want you to help support patients and send them to the right agencies’, but that is a skill set that is developing.

“We are developing them now, but it is going to take a while before we can get the practice in the group built up.

“It is a skill set every man, woman and child should have: the ability to recognise what family violence looks like he face of family violence and then be confident and competent to have a conversation with someone and say, ‘I am worried abut you, is everything OK?’”

Research at Monash’s Peninsula campus found two-thirds of the 260 paramedic students had no previous training in family violence, and just 3 per cent had completed a skills-based session.
Dr Sawyer said most paramedics reported not knowing how to respond when they suspected a patient was experiencing family violence, which often meant they ignored it.