Not-so-benign neglect: the medical response to battering.

Abstract

This article explores the medical response to abused women basing on the assumption that emphasizes on security advocacy and empowerment which guides the battered womans shelter movement is also the most appropriate for health care providers. It also presents different medical responses to abuse which alternates between a narrow clinical focus on physical injuries outside of the social context that makes them intelligible and an approach that stigmatizes abused women so that they appear responsible for the violence. Furthermore it also considers the extent to which current medical responses are rooted in misinformation sexist bias or in the structure of medical knowledge and practice. Two different studies on emergency medical response were drawn to assess the extent clinicians or abused women are able to work through this dilemma to an intervention that can be reasonably expected to prevent or reduce battering. These studies provide a complementary picture of the formal and subjective dimensions of the medical response to battered women in emergency settings.

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