Dealing with child abuse: development and evaluation of a short workshop for nurses

A 1-day workshop was evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in enhancing nurse (N = 70) understanding of child abuse. Measures of their knowledge and attitudes concerning abuse were administered before and after the workshop. The results indicated that the workshop led to a significant improvement in these two areas, in particular, a sub-sample (N = 25) who received an additional teaching aid (a programmed learning script) did better than their colleagues. Finally, a teaching evaluation form indicated a high degree of consumer satisfaction. It is concluded that the brief workshop was successful in enhancing knowledge and attitudes, and that it illustrates the kind of 'professional approach' recently advocated in the literature.