Violence Prevention in the Primary Care Setting

Training pediatric residents in violence prevention may increase the frequency of violence prevention education during pediatric medical visits. Residents attended a 2.5 hour program on violence prevention strategies. In 93 patient visits before the program was implemented, only 10% of visits included a discussion of guns or violence. After the program, and six months later, 19% of pediatric patient visits included violence discussion. Residents praised the program as useful, and 93% believed they would use the skills they learned when seeing their patients.