@article{ref1,
title="Medico-legal documentation of rape or sexual assault: are community-service doctors equipped for the task?",
journal="South African family practice",
year="2018",
author="Fouche, Lamaine and Bezuidenhout, Johan and Liebenberg, Chantelle and Adefuye, Anthonio Oladele",
volume="60",
number="1",
pages="46-46",
abstract="BACKGROUND:  Following upon two-year internship, community-service doctors make mistakes when they deal with evidence of medico-legal examinations in various settings. These mistakes result in alleged perpetrators being released by courts. This study investigated undergraduate clinical forensic medicine training, based on experiences and opinions of community-service doctors. This article focuses on incidents of alleged rape cases only.    Methods:  The study was a quantitative retrospective cohort study that made use of a questionnaire with an adapted Likert scale. An electronic survey tool was employed to target 150 community-service doctors throughout South Africa. Percentages are used to display results.    Results:  A response rate of 59.3% was achieved. Although 80% of the participants reported that they had undergraduate training on how to manage alleged rape or sexual assault cases, only 11.4% of the participants had hands-on exposure to an alleged rape case during their undergraduate training. In addition, the majority of the participants (77.1%) never had undergraduate training on how to complete the J88 form. These findings indicate that clinical forensic training in the undergraduate medical programme does not adequately prepare community-service doctors to meet the challenges of clinical forensic practice. The current curriculum should be adapted to address these shortcomings.    Conclusions:  Perpetrators cannot be convicted if evidence collected cannot stand up in court. Proper training of undergraduate medical students prior to their community-service posting will ensure that medico-legal documentation is completed correctly, leading to the presentation of credible evidence in a court of law in order to ensure successful conviction of alleged perpetrators.   Full text of the research articles are available online at  www.medpharm.tandfonline.com/ojfp )  S Afr Fam Pract 2018;  DOI: 10.1080/20786190.2017.1348046<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1726-426X",
doi="10.1080/20786190.2017.1348046",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20786190.2017.1348046"
}