EXTERNALLY FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS
Forensic medical examination (FME) spaces for domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV) victim-survivors: Design principles to address social inequities
Background
A more collaborative and empowering environment during forensic medical examination (FME) may help to reduce shame, which is critical to healing. Ideally, the FME should be conducted in the forensic examination room, which must be cleaned after use and kept closed between uses to avoid DNA contamination. Given the burden of increasing presentations to emergency departments and the need to meet guidelines and protocols (i.e. functional requirements), the FME spaces may be stark and lack consideration of the needs of victim-survivors. To address structural inequities, FME spaces should promote the wellbeing of populations most at risk of marginalisation, especially those at higher risk of experiencing domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV), ensuring the individuals’ confidentiality, dignity, safety and security as far as practicable. This project aims to propose built environment design principles for FME spaces that consider the sensitive needs of DFSV victims, mostly women, and that considers the additional special needs of disabled and other marginalised populations, while complying with functional requirements.
Aim
To create psychologically safer spaces for the forensic medical examination (FME) in emergency departments for DFSV victim-survivors.
Methods
Due to the subjective and sensitive nature of the topic, this project will follow qualitative research methods to understand the needs of DFSV victim-survivors and the FME functional requirements to propose built environment design principles. The research steps are as follows:
- Understanding the needs of DFSV victim-survivors and the FME functions: as a starting point, we aim to get familiarised with the needs of the DFSV victim-survivors, the purpose and the functions performed in the FME spaces.
- Identifying the functional requirements of FME spaces: to better understand the research problem and support the project objective, functional requirements of FME spaces will be identified, such as necessary rooms and equipment to perform the FME functions, as well as the needs of the DFSV victim-survivors.
- Developing the built environment design principles supportive to FME for DFSV victim-survivors: at the central stage of the project, the development of this set of design principles will involve an analysis effort to process and transform the information previously collected.
- Discussing the built environment design principles with subject matter experts (SMEs): presentation and discussion of the main findings with the SMEs that participated in the previous research steps.
Significance
The objective of this project is to address structural inequities by proposing built environment design principles for FME spaces that consider the needs of the population most victimised by DFSV* while complying with guidelines and protocols (i.e. functional requirements).Note: * Women, including within culturally and racially marginalised (CARM) populations e.g. migrants and refugees, the LGBTQI+ community, and people with a disability.