Elder Abuse Instrument: A Case Study

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Pages: 7

Introduction
The Elder Abuse Instrument is a 41-item tool that is used to examine signs, symptoms, and client complaints of elder abuse, neglect, exploitation, and abandonment (Boltz, Greenberg, & Fulmer, 2012). This tool is clinician-administered (advanced practice nurses, allied health personnel, health care providers, hospitals, nurses, physician assistants, physicians (Caceres & Fulmer, 2012, “Intended Users,” para. 1)) and takes roughly 12-15 minutes to complete. This tool however, has a grave disadvantage to it; there is no method of scoring and thus no way to distinguish a normal score from an abnormal one. This means that the clinician must analyze the results and formulate an opinion as to whether or not the patient is in need of social services’ assistance to deal with an issue of elder mistreatment (Boltz et al., 2012)
Clinical Problem
The Elder Abuse Instrument was established to address the problem of elder mistreatment (Boltz et al., 2012). According to Hildreth (2012), “elder abuse refers to the mistreatment of an older adult that threatens his or her health or safety (para. 1).” This is a very serious problem and one which is of high prevalence in this country. Elder abuse and neglect affect approximately 700,000
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These results indicated that the caregiver “self-reported CTS2 psychological aggression and physical abuse scales were consistent with” the LEAD panels determination of “psychological and physical abuse outcomes.” The results also demonstrated that the LEAD panel’s determination of neglectful caregiving was directly correlated with “evidence of abuse indicated on the neglect scale of the Elder Abuse Instrument”. The researchers also found that 31% of care recipients in the study were victims of multiple types of mistreatment (Wiglesworth et al., 2010, p.