ADVANCING HEALTH-CARE PRACTICE


EXPLORING THE LINKS BETWEEN WOMAN ABUSE, SUBSTANCE USE, AND PREGNANCY/EARLY PARENTING



BC Women's Hospital & Health Centre Kwantlen University College Atira Women's Resource Society Fraser Health



Introduction

Welcome to the workshop, Advancing Health-care Practice: Exploring the links between woman abuse, substance use, and pregnancy/early parenting.

This web-based workshop is based on a full-day, face-to-face workshop developed by Atira Women's Resource Society and the BC Women's Woman Abuse Response Program. It has been created in partnership with Kwantlen University College and Fraser Health, and through the generous financial support of the Nursing Directorate to begin to meet the needs of nurses (RNs, LPNs and RPNs) working with "high risk" pregnant and early parenting women. The issues it covers, however, are clearly relevant to other health-care and service providers.

The workshop consists of five modules:
  1. A new perspective of abuse in the workplace
  2. Understanding woman abuse and women's health
  3. Understanding Women's use of substances
  4. Pregnancy and early parenting under duress
  5. Best practices: linking women-centred care and harm reduction
Each of the modules builds on the previous one, so we strongly encourage you to do them in the order presented. The first three are each built around a woman's story, with links and activities throughtout the stories providing an opportunity for you to interact with the material being presented. You may want to read the entire story first, then go back and read the comment boxes and () do the activities. Each module should take you between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours, for a total of 5-8 hours. You may wish to complete the workshop over the course of several days or weeks. Please note that your answers will not be saved in the blanks. If you would like to keep track of your responses, feel free to print out these pages.

This workshop is an introduction to several key social issues which have enormous implications for women's health, and for the care we provide: violence/abuse in women'slives (including health-care providers), substance use, and pregnancy/mothering. There are full courses, web-based and face-to-face, on many of these subjects, and we encourage you to access them for more in-depth information. The primary goal of this workshop is to begin to explore the links between these issues, and to best practices in health-care.

Click on 'Module 1' at the top of this page to begin the workshop.