(Press-News.org) A "substantial" proportion of NHS hospital staff--around one in eight, in some places--treat the victims of people trafficking, with maternity services most likely to do so, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Although understanding of the sorts of health problems trafficked patients are likely to have, is generally high, few NHS staff feel adequately prepared to respond appropriately, the findings suggest.
International law requires that the UK provides victims of human trafficking with whatever medical treatment they require, which includes psychological help, counselling, and further information on support services.
It is thought that around 2.5 million people are trafficked every year, with every country in the world either a source, transit point, or destination.
The researchers wanted to know just how likely it is that NHS hospital staff will encounter patients who have been trafficked, and how well prepared they feel to respond to them.
They therefore quizzed almost 800 NHS staff from a wide range of specialties to gauge their experience and knowledge of people trafficking, as well as their confidence in responding appropriately to it, using a validated questionnaire (PROTECT) between August 2013 and April 2014.
All the healthcare professionals were attending either mandatory training in child protection and vulnerable adult issues at 10 secondary care trusts across England, where at least five victims of human trafficking had been reported to the police the previous year, or were at meetings of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
In all, around one in eight (13%) staff said they had treated a patient whom they either knew, or suspected, had been trafficked. In eight trusts, this proportion rose to more than one in 10 of the staff.
Maternity services staff were the most likely to encounter victims of human trafficking, with one in five (20.4%) saying they had treated such patients.
But most staff in every specialty represented said they didn't know what questions to ask to spot potential victims (just under 89%), while more than three quarters (78%) said they didn't feel sufficiently trained to enable them to help victims adequately.
Over half said they lacked the confidence to make appropriate referrals, with referrals for men vexing the most staff (71%).
Most participants (over 95%) had no idea of the scale of human trafficking in the UK, and three out of four (76.5%) didn't realise that without appropriate safeguards, a call to the police could put patients in even more danger.
"In particular [staff] lack knowledge about how to ask about experiences of human trafficking, how and when to contact law enforcement agencies, and how to make referrals to local and national support agencies," write the researchers.
Three out of four of those surveyed said they would be interested in targeted training around people trafficking, particularly those working in mental health and emergency medicine services.
The researchers caution that their findings may not be applicable to the entire NHS, but suggest that additional training for NHS staff could improve the wellbeing and safety of such a vulnerable group of people.
INFORMATION:
Nine potentially modifiable risk factors may contribute to up to two thirds of Alzheimer's disease cases worldwide, suggests an analysis of the available evidence, published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
The analysis indicates the complexity of Alzheimer's disease development and just how varied the risk factors for it are.
But the researchers suggest that preventive strategies, targeting diet, drugs, body chemistry, mental health, pre-existing disease, and lifestyle may help to stave off dementia. This could be particularly important, ...
In a Policy View published in The Lancet Neurology journal, a group of leading experts on the epidemiology of dementia state that the number of people with dementia - both new cases and total numbers with the disease - in some Western European countries is stabilising despite population ageing, in direct contrast to the "dementia epidemic" reported in some recent studies.
The Policy View discusses data from five large epidemiological studies done in Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and Spain that compare dementia occurrence in old people across two periods of time using ...
Highlights
Among kidney transplant recipients, patients with mostly IgG3 donor-specific HLA antibodies had a higher likelihood of organ rejection soon after transplantation.
If rejection occurred in those with mostly IgG4 antibodies, it was usually much later after transplantation.
Washington, DC (August 20, 2015) -- The dominant antibody type present in the blood of transplant recipients may indicate their likelihood of experiencing organ rejection, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). ...
DALLAS, Aug. 20, 2015 -- Caregiver spouses of stroke survivors are at an increased risk of mental and physical health issues that may continue for years, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
Swedish researchers evaluated 248 stroke survivors, below age 70 (average mid-sixties), and their spouses at stroke onset and compared the results with 245 non-stroke controls for seven years after the stroke event.
At the seven-year follow-up, 16.5 percent of survivors had suffered a recurrent stroke. Spouses of survivors reported lower scores ...
Boston, MA -- A widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and interference with immune function--perfluorinated alkylate substances, or PFASs--appears to build up in infants by 20%-30% for each month they're breastfed, according to a new study co-authored by experts from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first study to show the extent to which PFASs are transferred to babies through breast milk, and to quantify their levels over time.
"We knew that small amounts of PFAS can occur in breast milk, but our serial blood analyses now show ...
In-depth interviews conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine of 20 young women attending an urban sexually transmitted disease clinic have documented a variety of unexpected, unintended sexual encounters linked to their alcohol use before sex occurs.
Links between alcohol use and risky or deleterious sexual encounters are not necessarily new, say investigators, but this small study identifies very specifically the disconnect between what young women have in mind when they drink and have sex and what really happens.
"The idea behind ...
According to a survey conducted by Rhode Island Hospital researchers, there is significant variability regarding how clinicians manage catheters placed in the arteries of patients in intensive care units. Some practices may increase risk of infection associated with these catheters. Fewer than half of those surveyed complied with current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) infection prevention guidelines for arterial catheter insertions. The study was published today in Critical Care Medicine.
"Barrier precautions are employed inconsistently by critical care ...
Washington, DC - August 20, 2015 - Swedish exchange students who studied in India and in central Africa returned from their sojourns with an increased diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in their gut microbiomes. The research is published 10 August in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
In the study, the investigators found a 2.6-fold increase in genes encoding resistance to sulfonamide, a 7.7-fold increase in trimethoprim resistance genes, and a 2.6-fold increase in resistance to beta-lactams, all of this without ...
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Aug. 20, 2015 -- A study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and other major research institutes, found a new set of genes that can indicate improved survival after surgery for patients with pancreatic cancer. The study also showed that detection of circulating tumor DNA in the blood could provide an early indication of tumor recurrence.
In conjunction with the Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) Pancreatic Cancer Dream Team, the study was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications.
Using whole-exome sequencing ...
If dark energy is hiding in our midst in the form of hypothetical particles called "chameleons," Holger Müller and his team at the University of California, Berkeley, plan to flush them out.
The results of an experiment reported in this week's issue of Science narrows the search for chameleons a thousand times compared to previous tests, and Müller, an assistant professor of physics, hopes that his next experiment will either expose chameleons or similar ultralight particles as the real dark energy, or prove they were a will-o'-the-wisp after all.
Dark energy ...
