Nursing students' discourses on gender-based violence and their training for a comprehensive healthcare response: A qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Gender-based violence is a worldwide major public health issue with detrimental effects on the health of women. Nurses can play an essential role in its identification, management and prevention. Specific training is essential to be able to successfully address gender-based violence and accordingly, has been incorporated into many university's training programmes for nurses and other health care professionals. Research aimed at exploring attitudes and perceptions of gender-based violence in undergraduate student nurses following these new training programmes is scarce. Objective: The aim of this qualitative study was to explore third- and fourth-year nursing students' perceptions and attitudes toward gender-based violence. Design: A focus groups based qualitative study. Setting: A public University in Spain. Participants: Purposive sample of 42 nursing students who joined 7 focus groups. Methods: Focus groups discussions following a semi-structured interview guide. Discussions were transcribed and analysed following critical discourse analysis to identify interpretative repertoires. Results: From the analysis, three interpretative repertoires emerged. The first, ‘Gender-based violence is something serious’, reflected participants' acknowledgment of the social relevance of this type of violence. The second interpretative repertoire, ‘Men are defenceless!’, related to the perception that national legislation on gender-based violence was discriminatory to men and the perception of a lack of social sensitisation toward intimate partner violence against men. The last one, ‘Trained to address gender-based violence but still unprepared’ encompassed participants' confidence in their ability to identify gender-based violence but uncertainty as to how to respond to gender-based violence exposed women in terms of professional practice. Conclusions: Participants perceived that training has increased their knowledge and self-confidence in identifying cases. However, training should strongly challenge widespread myths about gender-based violence that could negatively affect their performance as nurses.