Partner violence and medical encounters: African-American women's perspectives

To examine the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and patient satisfaction with medical encounters among an African-American population.

Cross-sectional, self-administered, anonymous survey.

Community-based, primary care center.

Consecutive African-American women recruited from an urban health center. A total of 102 women provided sufficient information to reveal whether they were currently experiencing IPV and to allow us to assess their experiences in their most recent primary care encounter.

Patients' perceptions of their most recent encounter using questions adopted from the Medical Interview Satisfaction Scale and Consultation Satisfaction Questionnaire. We used the Conflicts Tactics Scale, supplemented with questions measuring sexual violence and emotional abuse, to assess IPV "in the past year."

Women who reported current IPV rated several aspects of the encounter more negatively than did women who did not report current abuse. The IPV victims were less likely to report that they felt respected and accepted during the encounter, and they provided lower ratings of the quality of communication with their providers.

It is unclear why victims of partner violence experience medical encounters as less satisfactory. Researchers need to expand studies of medical encounters as experienced by abused women to determine whether IPV status adversely affects general medical care.