Domestic Violence - Jeremy Forster

Project Summary:

The Medical Students Volunteer Corps (MSVC) is a volunteer organization run by medical students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School that seeks to increase awareness and efficacy in dealing with the problems of domestic violence. Currently, our mission is two-fold: First, we provide an "on call" program for the University Hospital Emergency Room on weekends. When called in, we counsel the domestic abuse survivor and help them contact the desired social services. Second, we attempt to educate other Medical Students regarding the prevalence, signs, and counseling of domestic abuse survivors. To this end, we invite speakers to talk about the issue over our lunch periods ("noon talks") and offer two day-long training sessions co-sponsored by Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) to those who are interested. For the 1998-99 school year, we wish to both expand the program and take it in new directions. By doing so, we hope to educate a greater number of students and provide them with additional information and opportunities to gain personal experience in dealing with this ever-growing public health problem. We have several specific goals.

Major Steps Taken as of Dec. 99:

We want to offer our services to other emergency rooms and urgent care centers around the city. In addition, we would like to establish a relationship with the University Hospital social workers such that we could offer "joint interventions" in domestic abuse cases.
To increase awareness among medical students, we are setting a goal of having one speaker per month address various aspects of domestic abuse. Prospective talks include survivors telling their stories, a showing of "Defending Our Lives," the Academy Award winning documentary on domestic abuse survivors, and state legislators speaking on mandatory reporting laws.
We want to continue to provide interested students with more extensive training on the dynamics, signs, and counseling of domestic abuse survivors through weekend workshops co-sponsored with Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS).
We would like to expand this program to the other health professions students at the University. Specifically, we would like to involve the Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical and Occupational Therapy students.
We would also like to print and offer small, laminated "Interview cards" to medical students with helpful tips in screening for, detecting, and counseling domestic abuse survivors as well as phone numbers of social services. With these cards, we would offer buttons that students/professionals could wear to show their patients that they care about domestic violence and want to know when it is occurring.
Additional mandatory training sessions for MEDIC volunteers are currently being discussed. By offering these additional sessions, we hope to aid the MEDIC volunteers in screening for and identifying domestic abuse survivors in this population.

Major Challenges

Recruiting people to join MSVC was very difficult as we are all involved in so many things and our time is scarce. We tried to streamline our training programs and offer lunch-time meetings to improve convenience and attendance. This forced us to get down to the basics.

Partnerships Developed

Definitely- I have met many med. students interested in family violence as well as served on the State Medical Society Subcommittee on Domestic Violence where I met many people who are prominent activists in this field.

Funding

The State Medical Society gave us $500 to help with printing/food/travel, etc.

LOCUS's Role in Your Project

It motivated me by getting me in touch with other activist students who pushed me to work harder and helped me get over roadblocks.