Education of health care professionals, health associates and expert associates on gender-based violence
Objective. The aim of this study is to determine the quality of accredited education on the topic of gender-based violence to health care professionals, health and professional associates in the Republic of Serbia. Methods. A search of a database of accredited continuing education programs published on the website of the Health Council of the Republic of Serbia for the period between January 2010 and July 2019. identified programs using the keywords "violence", "family" "gender-based". The ch2 test was used to examine the differences between the independent variables versus the dependent variable. Results. This study showed that two thirds of the training was intended for health care professionals, only while health care workers, health and professional associates were allocated for every seventh education. If the type of institution is observed, it can be noticed that twice as many programs are accredited by civil society organizations in relation to the number of programs accredited by health institutions. Considering the time period in which the programs are accredited, a trend of increasing number of programs can be observed. Among the accredited programs, national courses accounted for 42.6% of the accredited programs while every other program was free. There is a statistically significant difference between educations organized by different types of institutions in relation to the type and cost of education. Conclusion. Although in the observed period there is an increasing trend in the number of accredited programs dealing with gender-based violence, there is still room to improve the quality of continuing education in terms of increasing the number of trainings with an interactive method of work, trainings aimed at different profiles of health professionals and health and professional associates, as well as free on line trainings.