How Do Nurses Keep Children Safe From Abuse and Neglect, and Does it Make a Difference? A Scoping Review
Lauren Lines1, Julian Grant1, Alison Hutton2
1College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Journal of Pediatric Nursing
|August 2, 2018
Summary
Nurses play a vital role in child protection, focusing on abuse prevention and detection. While interventions like home visiting show promise, more research is needed to confirm their effectiveness in safeguarding children.
Area of Science:
- Nursing
- Child Protection
- Public Health
Background:
- Child abuse and neglect remain significant public health concerns.
- Nurses are uniquely positioned to identify and intervene in cases of child maltreatment.
- Understanding the scope of nursing practice in child protection is crucial for evidence-based interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To comprehensively review the extent of child protection activities undertaken by nurses.
- To identify nursing interventions with the strongest evidence base for preventing, detecting, and responding to child abuse and neglect.
- To inform future nursing practice and research in child safeguarding.
Main Methods:
- A scoping review guided by Arksey and O'Malley's framework.
- Searches of major electronic databases (CINAHL, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science) and grey literature.
- Inclusion of 41 studies from seven countries, supplemented by manual literature searching.
Main Results:
- Nurses primarily engage in abuse prevention (32 studies), with fewer studies on detection (1 study) and mitigating effects (8 studies).
- Key nursing interventions include post-natal home visiting (20 studies), parent education (10 studies), and care for sexually abused children (4 studies).
- Evidence of nurses' positive impact on child abuse and neglect measures was inconsistent, with some studies using indirect indicators.
Conclusions:
- Nurses are involved in various aspects of child protection, including prevention, detection, and response.
- The current literature presents mixed evidence on the effectiveness of nursing interventions.
- Further research is essential to fully capture and validate the diverse roles nurses play in child safeguarding.
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