Intimate Partner Violence Assessment Program Evaluation

Intimate partner violence (IPV) refers to the violence or patterns of abusive behaviors between intimate partners with 17 % of men and 33 % of women experiencing IPV (Ahmed et al., 2017). Despite the prevalence of IPV in the general population, compliance with national standards for IPV screening is inconsistent. Surprisingly, only 66 % of hospitals across the US screen for IPV in their EDs (Delgado et al., 2011). The purpose of this project was to conduct a systematic program evaluation of the IPV screening program currently utilized in the ED of an academic medical center. This program evaluation led to nine recommendations that can improve the site’s compliance (0.015 %) with hospital policy and TJC standards. Considering the sobering statistic that 50 % of women who died from IPV were seen by a provider a year before their death (Aboutanos et al., 2019), implementing the recommendations from this program evaluation and continuing annual audits of compliance with TJC standards has significant potential to consistently improve outcomes for the vulnerable population at risk of IPV.