Facilitators and barriers to routine intimate partner violence screening in antenatal care settings in Uganda

Uganda clinical guidelines recommend routine screening of pregnant women for intimate partner violence (IPV) during antenatal care (ANC). Healthcare providers play a critical role in identifying IPV during pregnancy in ANC clinics. This study explored facilitators and barriers for IPV screening during pregnancy (perinatal IPV screening) by ANC-based healthcare workers in Uganda.

We conducted qualitative in-depth interviews among twenty-eight purposively selected healthcare providers in one rural and an urban-based ANC health center in Eastern and Central Uganda respectively. Barriers and facilitators to IPV screening during ANC were identified iteratively using inductive-deductive thematic analysis.

Participants had provided ANC services for a median (IQR) duration of 4.0 (0.1-19) years. Out of 28 healthcare providers, 11 routinely screened women attending ANC clinics for IPV and 10 had received IPV-related training. Barriers to routine IPV screening included limited staffing and space resources, lack of comprehensive gender-based violence (GBV) training and provider unawareness of the extent of IPV during pregnancy. Facilitators were availability of GBV protocols and providers who were aware of IPV (or GBV) tools tended to use them to routinely screen for IPV. Healthcare workers reported the need to establish patient trust and a safe ANC clinic environment for disclosure to occur. ANC clinicians suggested creation of opportunities for triage-level screening and modification of patients' ANC cards used to document women's medical history. Some providers expressed concerns of safety or retaliatory abuse if perpetrating partners were to see reported abuse.

Our findings can inform efforts to strengthen GBV interventions focused on increasing routine perinatal IPV screening by ANC-based clinicians. Implementation of initiatives to increase routine perinatal IPV screening should focus on task sharing, increasing comprehensive IPV training opportunities, including raising awareness of IPV severity, trauma-informed care and building trusting patient-physician relationships.