Course Information

Recognizing and Preventing Child Abuse for Health Professionals

Recognizing and Preventing Child Abuse for Health Professionals

In Canada, child maltreatment is a serious public health concern. Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that over 33% of Canadian children experience physical or sexual abuse at some point in their childhood.

Many studies indicate that underreporting by health care professionals is an issue. Reasons for this may be fear of legal action, loss of trust/relationship with the family, or making a false allegation.

The Office of the Child and Youth Advocate of NL report, ‘The Case for Specialized Health Care to Recognize and Prevent Child Sexual Abuse’ highlighted the importance of the need for training of health professionals in this area. One of the recommendations being that Memorial University’s Faculty of Medicine and School of Nursing collaboratively address improved education in this area, prompting the development of this teaching module.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, you should be able to:

  1. Define child abuse/maltreatment, list various types and recognize associated risk factors
  2. Discuss federal and provincial child protection legislation and outline reporting requirements
  3. Describe the roles, rights and responsibilities of physicians, nurses and other health professionals in screening and preventing suspected child abuse
  4. Recognize, assess and document potential signs and symptoms of suspected child abuse
  5. Describe appropriate steps to take when reporting suspicion of child abuse to appropriate authorities
  6. Identify appropriate provider resources for facilitating the reporting of suspected abuse and providing ongoing support for the affected child/family

This continuing professional development (CPD) program has been designed to consider the CanMEDS - Family Medicine Competency Framework, including the roles of: Family Medicine Expert, Communicator, Collaborator, Health Advocate, Manager, and Professional.

Course Registration

Recognizing and Preventing Child Abuse for Health Professionals

MDcme (on behalf of its consortium partners) protects the privacy of personal and other information regarding course registrants. MDcme will not release personally identifiable information to a third party without an individual's consent, except such information as is required for reporting purposes to the body or bodies accrediting this course for continuing education study credits. MDcme collects and reviews all course data (registration/course completion statistics, pre/post-test and satisfaction survey) to determine if a course meets participants' learning needs. Data is reviewed to improve existing courses and to inform the development of future course offerings. If an evaluation report is provided to a third party, all data is summarized, with no participant identifying information included. Given the importance and potential impact of some courses, evaluation data may be presented and/or published in academic venues. Again, this data is always summarized, with no identifying information included.

At times, a contributing/partner organization involved in a course may request individual participant data from pre/post or evaluation surveys for quality improvement or educational research purposes. This data would be de-identified so would not be associated with any personally identifiable information such as your name, profession, city, etc.

If requested by a contributing/partner organization:

Do you consent to the release of your individual, de-identified pre/post or evaluation survey data for the purposes of quality improvement or educational research?


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Credits

    (up to) 1.5 credit hours

Accreditation

    Maintenance of Certification (Section 3)

    This program is an Accredited Self-Assessment Program (Section 3) as defined by the Maintenance of Certification Program of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and approved by the Office of Professional and Educational Development (OPED), Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University. Remember to visit MAINPORT to record your learning and outcomes.

    Mainpro+
    This Self-Learning program meets the certification criteria of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and has been certified by the Office of Professional and Educational Development (OPED), Memorial University for up to 1.5 Mainpro+ credits.


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