Intimate partner violence and the health care response: a postmodern critique.

Despite the overwhelming acknowledgment by health professionals that intimate partner violence is a health issue for women, the present health care response is inadequate to meet women's needs, according to Stark, in the Source Book on Violence Against Women (2001). This article examines through a postmodern lens the health care response. The dominant discourses in the literature indicate that health professionals lack knowledge about intimate partner violence, have attitudes and values that inhibit an effective response, and have no time to respond to these women. To date, strategies to improve the health care response have been limited in effectiveness as structural constraints of the health service and models of practice employed have not been addressed.