Knowledge, Awareness, and Attitude of Physicians Toward Child Abuse: A Cross-Sectional Study

Child abuse refers to any type of mistreatment of a child, perpetrated by a parent, caregiver, or another individual in a custodial capacity, which may lead to instances of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. Physicians play a crucial role in identifying and managing this phenomenon in the healthcare setting, as the number of unreported cases increases globally.

A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted between 2022 and 2023 among physicians practicing in Saudi Arabia to assess their knowledge, awareness, and attitude toward child abuse. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26 (Released 2019; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States).

A total of 153 physicians were involved in this study, in which 65 participants (42.5%) indicated poor awareness of child abuse, while 79 participants (51.6%) indicated moderate knowledge of child abuse. Additionally, lack of knowledge was the most common barrier to reporting child abuse in 87 participants (56.9%). A positive significant correlation was identified between awareness and knowledge and between knowledge and attitude. Also, it was found that a higher attitude score was more associated with being male, having less experience, practicing in the emergency medicine department, and working in a governmental hospital.

These results highlight the significance of implementing specialized training programs and workshops focused on identifying and reporting child abuse, as well as providing guidelines for recognizing signs of abuse and taking appropriate intervention measures.