Du Mont J, Macdonald S, Kosa D, Elliot S, Spencer C, Yaffe M. Development of a comprehensive hospital-based elder abuse intervention: an initial systematic scoping review.
PLoS One 2015;
10:e0125105. [PMID:
25938414 PMCID:
PMC4418829 DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0125105]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2014] [Accepted: 03/20/2015] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Introduction
Elder abuse, a universal human rights problem, is associated with many negative consequences. In most jurisdictions, however, there are no comprehensive hospital-based interventions for elder abuse that address the totality of needs of abused older adults: psychological, physical, legal, and social. As the first step towards the development of such an intervention, we undertook a systematic scoping review.
Objectives
Our primary objective was to systematically extract and synthesize actionable and applicable recommendations for components of a multidisciplinary intersectoral hospital-based elder abuse intervention. A secondary objective was to summarize the characteristics of the responses reviewed, including methods of development and validation.
Methods
The grey and scholarly literatures were systematically searched, with two independent reviewers conducting the title, abstract and full text screening. Documents were considered eligible for inclusion if they: 1) addressed a response (e.g., an intervention) to elder abuse, 2) contained recommendations for responding to abused older adults with potential relevance to a multidisciplinary and intersectoral hospital-based elder abuse intervention; and 3) were available in English.
Analysis
The extracted recommendations for care were collated, coded, categorized into themes, and further reviewed for relevancy to a comprehensive hospital-based response. Characteristics of the responses were summarized using descriptive statistics.
Results
649 recommendations were extracted from 68 distinct elder abuse responses, 149 of which were deemed relevant and were categorized into 5 themes: Initial contact; Capacity and consent; Interview with older adult, caregiver, collateral contacts, and/or suspected abuser; Assessment: physical/forensic, mental, psychosocial, and environmental/functional; and care plan. Only 6 responses had been evaluated, suggesting a significant gap between development and implementation of recommendations.
Discussion
To address the lack of evidence to support the recommendations extracted in this review, in a future study, a group of experts will formally evaluate each recommendation for its inclusion in a comprehensive hospital-based response.
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