Reproductive Healthcare Providers and Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors: Minding the Gap

Using the phenomenological research model, this study explored the experience of reproductive healthcare providers (HCPs) who suspect patients in their care to be survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Investigation of the literature revealed a paucity of studies dedicated to the HCPs' perspective of working with CSA survivors. Phenomenological reduction analysis of the interviews with HCPs yielded textural themes of the process of knowing, pressures, emotions, powerlessness, and adaptations. Through the eidetic variation, the researcher created a structural description of the phenomenon, guided by the universal structures of relationship to self, relationship to others, body-hood, temporality, spatiality, causality, and materiality. The final synthesis revealed that HCPs' intentions, in service of best care practices, are often misattuned to CSA survivors' specific needs in reproductive healthcare. HCPs struggle with providing appropriate interventions that meet professional standards of care within the systemic constraints of reproductive healthcare because they lack legitimized protocols for effective interventions for CSA survivors. Study results highlight the needs to augment reproductive HCPs' strategies for attending to CSA survivor patients and increase self-care for such occupational stressors. Recommendations included validating the legitimacy of CSA's effects on reproductive healthcare and proposing a model of care for the HCP-CSA survivor patient dyad.;Keywords: Healthcare provider, reproductive healthcare, patient, childhood sexual abuse survivor, phenomenological research.