Elder Abuse In Nursing Homes: A Case Study

While researching texts written about Abuse in Nursing Homes, I found a few authors who published books about the Nursing Aides ’ Attitudes to Elder Abuse in Nursing Homes: The Effect of Work Stressors and Burnout. Nursing aides ’attitudes condoning elder abuse are a possible risk factor for executing abusive behaviors against elder residents of long-term care facilities but have been studied infrequently. My purpose of the study was to assess nursing aides ’attitudes that condone abusive behaviors toward elderly people, as well as the relationship of these attitudes to demographic variables, work stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity, and work overload), burnout, and perceived control, based on the

Condoning abusive behaviors were closely associated with higher levels of work stressors, burnout, and low income. Multiple regression analyses revealed that demographic variables, work stressors, burnout, and perceived control explained 12% of the variance of condoning abusive behaviors among the nursing aides. Of these, role ambiguity, role conflict, and burnout were significantly associated with attitudes condoning abusive behaviors. In addition, burnout partially mediated the relationship between work stressors and attitudes condoning elder abuse. Conclusions: As nursing aides ’attitudes condoning elder abuse may influence their actual behaviors, training and supervision programs should be developed to reduce work stressors and burnout and to modify these attitudes. Key Words: Attitudes toward elder abuse, Long-term facilities, Work stressors, Burnout, Theory of planned behavior Elder abuse has been defined by the World Health Organization as a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust and which causes harm or distress to an older person (Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, WI, & Lozano, 2002). It includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse; financial exploitation; neglect; and violation of rights (Joshi & Flaherty, 2005). Elder abuse in long-term

Only in the early 1990s did elder abuse and neglect arouse professional and social awareness. Since then some progress has been made to confront the phenomenon (Lowenstein & Duron), and several large-scale studies have been conducted in general (Cohen, Halevy-Levin, Gaging, & Friedman, 2006, 2007; Eisikovits, Winter-stein, & Lowenstein, 2005) and in nursing homes in particular (Bar-Nathan, 2008; Fleishman & Ronen, 1989; Lowenstein, 1999). A recent survey conducted in Israel among 510 caregiving staff in 24 nursing homes (Bar-Nathan, 2008) found rates of elder abuse similar to those in the other Western countries mentioned above (Georgian, 2001; Polymer & Moore, 1989). Slightly more than half of the respondents admitted abusing elderly residents over the previous year and about 70% of them reported that they had been present at incidents in which another staff member abused an elderly resident (Bar-Nathan, 2008). An examination of attitudes to elder abuse is highly important as these could portend behavior (Green, 1997) as demonstrated in previous studies (Glassman & Albarracín, 2006; Mcconville & Cornell, 2003). Attitudes may predict actions by a person witnessing abuse, such as reporting it to responsible parties or giving assistance to the victim ( Muslim, 2003 ), or presage abusive behaviors toward elderly people