Question

Describe a THEORETICAL scenario (in detail) in which you may encounter child abuse as a nurse in your future career.

Answer 1

CHILD ABUSE

Child abuse is the physical, psychological or sexual neglect or failure to provide child's physical, educational, or emotional needs.

Neglect and abuse is the result of individual, family and social factors.

Risk factors for child abuse or neglect

• poverty
• drug and alcohol use
• mental health disorder
• single parenthood
• first time parents/ adolescent parents

children who are abused or neglected may appear;

• tired
• hungry
• may have physical injuries
• emotional or mental problems

TYPES

there are many types of child abuse or neglect;

• physical neglect/ abuse
• emotional neglect/ abuse
• medical neglect
• educational neglect
• sexual abuse

when we are working as a nurse we may have to take care of the victims of child abuse. when we are caring for a child first we have to assess the child carefully. most of the physical abuses can be identified while doing physical examination. there will be signs of punching, beating, kicking, throwing, stabbing, choking or hitting. the child may also wear cloths to coverup the physical injuries.

also a nurse can identify the abuse while taking history from the parents. if the parents are abusing the child or if they are aware of the abuse it will be hard for the parents to explain the cause of injuries. sometimes the parents may talk about their child in a negative way. and sometimes the parent may have a history of being abused as child or abusing pets or animals.

in case of a child with sexual abuse we can identify the child by the signs like; the child may have adifficulty in walking or sitting, the child may refuse to change the cloths, child may report to have scary dreams or wet bed, sometimes the child may know more about sex or sexual behaviours than they should know, or may be they will run away.

as nurse we can easily identify physical and sexual abuses but it will be hard to identify the emotional abuses. the signs that the victim of child emotional abuse may show such as; the child may have an extreme behaviour, the child may attempt to suicide and lack of attachment to parents. if we are talkinfg to the parents we can find that they will not have any concerns about the child's problems or they will blame or insult the child often.