Screening for elder mistreatment in emergency departments: current progress and recommendations for next steps. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • Emergency Department (ED) visits provide an important but seldom realized opportunity to identify elder mistreatment. Many screening tools exist, including several that are brief and may be effective, but few have been specifically designed for or tested in EDs. In addition to the absence of validated tools, other challenges with implementing ED elder mistreatment screening include difficulty integrating anything longer than a few questions into a busy clinical encounter and resources required to respond to positive screens. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) offers a critical tool to facilitate elder mistreatment screening through required data entry and real-time monitoring of compliance and results. We describe current work in the field and recommend next steps including design and testing of a two-step screening process, implementation research to accelerate adoption, development of ED-based interventions and referral protocols for positive cases, and consideration of the important role of pre-hospital providers in case identification.

publication date

  • June 1, 2020

Research

keywords

  • Elder Abuse
  • Emergency Service, Hospital
  • Geriatric Assessment
  • Mass Screening
  • Patient Admission

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC7520626

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 85086297162

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1111/acem.12395

PubMed ID

  • 32508284

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 32

issue

  • 3