Confronting Violence

Improving the Health Care Response to Domestic Violence Through Protocols and Policies, 1994

Despite the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare's accreditation requirement that hospital emergency departments include standards for dealing with spousal and elder abuse, in the 1990s, few hospitals had such protocols. This report examined the national health care response to domestic violence by highlighting a variety of successful programs, and making suggestions for improvements to and replication of strong models nationwide. The report provided explicit protocol and policy examples for best practices, and included appendices with sample letters, extensive resources, and a bibliography.

Courtesy National Library of Medicine