The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently posted an “in progress” recommendation statement for clinicians to screen for intimate partner violence and caregiver abuse in primary care settings. The proposed statement is open for public comment until November 25, 2024. The USPSTF suggests that clinicians screen pregnant and postpartum women as well as women of reproductive age for signs of intimate partner violence. However, it determined that there is insufficient evidence to recommend either for or against screening for caregiver abuse of older/vulnerable adults.
Good thinking: At the community level, an emergency medicine radiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has developed an automated clinical decision support tool to help clinical teams identify intimate partner violence. It uses the patient’s clinical history and radiological data, including consideration for defensive injuries such as bone fractures. Part of the reason why Bharti Khurana, MD, MBA, built the tool is because many patients experiencing violence will often answer “no” to questionnaires that screen for such violence. Read more from the JUCM archives on referring vulnerable patients: Human Trafficking in the Urgent Care Setting: Recognizing and Referring Vulnerable Patients
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