If there is such a thing as a household atrocity, child abuse is it. Worldwide, the United Nations estimates that 3,500 children under the age of 15 die as a result of abuse each year. In the late 1990s, up to three million children in the U.S. were thought to be abused annually, with the number rising at least 2% a year since. According to a study published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, there may be one group of people who could be doing a lot more to blow the whistle on the batterers: family doctors, nurses and other health care providers.
Researchers at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, recently surveyed 419 health care professionals, asking how many of them had ever examined a child they suspected of being abused and how many subsequently reported it. A disturbing 60% said that yes, they had cared for a child with tell-tale bruising or other suspicious injuries; perhaps more troubling, however, was that fewer than half of them ever did anything about it.
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