Identifying Domestic Violence Within The Dental Office
Being in close proximity with female patients seeking treatment, dental office professionals have a unique and important role in identifying cases of domestic violence, as well as offering assistance or intervention for abused women.
It is important to note that almost a third of all women are or have been abused by their boyfriend or husband, possibly including the women you have working for you in your dental office. Anastasia L. Turchetta, RDH, and Teresa Duncan, MS have published “Domestic Violence” in the RDH Magazine that is well worth your time to review and print for further evaluation. If you are a Dentist, and you have more than three women working for you, the odds are that at least one of those women has been a victim of domestic violence at some point in her life.
“Domestic Violence: Proactive Role for Dentistry” provides important intervention strategies for dental practitioners; clears up myths surrounding domestic violence; and explains the signs and symptoms of domestic abuse that Dentists and Office Staff need to look out for:
Dentists can, and should, be proactive in recognizing abuse and reaching out to help the victims. The first step in helping these women is to consciously empathize with them and their needs. Women do not stay in violent relationships because they enjoy it or are able to tolerate it. Survivors talk about their horror, helplessness, and terror as they tried to endure the violence. Fear of losing their children, fear of being killed, financial instability, and rejection by their friends and family are examples of the realities that prevent victims from leaving an abusive partner. The most dangerous time for a woman is when she actually decides to leave an abusive relationship.
“Tackling Domestic Violence: the role of health professionals” is available in a 15-page PDF file at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/dpr32.pdf, so Dentists and dental office staff can carefully examine the ways in which they can work together as a team and provide needed help and awareness to victims of domestic abuse.
Having been in an abusive relationship myself (at the hands of my ex-husband), I am very passionate about bringing greater awareness to women who are being abused, and there have been several occasions in our office where it has been necessary to use a variety of assertive techniques to assist these women in getting the help they needed.
Signs and symptoms of abusive relationships:
- Physical abuse or battering- involving shoving, pushing, kicking, hitting, grabbing, pulling hair and threatening bodily harm.
- Emotional or psychological abuse- including controlling a woman’s freedom to come and go as she pleases, brainwashing, spying or stalking her at work or with friends, monitoring phone calls.
- Sexual abuse or rape- physically forcing or coercing sexual favors against her will or with threat of violence if she does not comply, sexual acts following physical violence with or without harmful and painful devices without her consent.
- Damaging property- involving breaking household items, damaging walls, throwing objects at his victim or near enough to cause great fear of physical harm while in a rage.
In order to break free from their abusive partners, women need to identify and recognize the early warning signs of abusive behaviors, and take active steps to leave the relationship with their boyfriend or get a divorce from their husband.
Leaving an abusive relationship is typically a highly volatile time in a woman’s life, as angry and controlling men tend to react with increased levels of abuse, sometimes even killing their wives or girlfriends. Dentists and dental team members need to be proactive with female patients who show signs of having been abused, offering compassionate and empathetic attention, tactfully quizzing female patients regarding possible abuse, and provide helpful information and resources of how and where to seek immediate help.
More often than not, abused women do not have free access to money in order to quickly leave their abusive husbands, and they need to learn how to hide money from an abusive husband so they can begin making secret plans to escape the abuse and move on with their lives.
In your dental office, have you had occasions where you suspected or believed a female patient was being abused by her husband? What actions have you taken in order to provide her assistance and help? What suggestions can you offer women that need to know how to hide money from an abusive husband? Please leave any experiences, suggestions or ideas in the comment section below.
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