Staff Responses When Parents Hit Children in a Hospital Setting.
Sarah A Font, Elizabeth T Gershoff, Catherine A Taylor and 6 others
PMID 27802257WHAT IT FOUND
23% of surveyed staff, or 658 people, reported seeing a parent hit a child.
Among recent witnesses, 61.6% of staff not in direct care said they never took action, often because they did not know what to do.
Key findings
0123% of the full sample, or 658 medical center staff, had witnessed parents hitting their children in the medical centers.
02Among staff who witnessed hitting in the previous three months, 61.6% of non-direct care staff members reported that they never took action, compared with less than one-third of physicians, nurses, and other direct care staff.
03Nearly half of staff who witnessed hitting but did not always intervene said they did not know what to say or do to stop the parent.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only two medical centers were included, and the survey was voluntary, so respondents may not represent all staff. The study relied on self-report and recall of witnessing and intervening. There were few physician respondents, although physicians may be influential with parents. The sample had limited racial and gender diversity. 399 responses from the general medical center and 51 from the children's hospital were excluded, mainly because job type was missing.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The supplied publication types list NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these staff reports as evidence that an intervention works. The study measured what staff said they witnessed and did; it did not test a training program or policy.