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Elderly abuse: risk factors and nursing role

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Abstract

Elderly abuse is still a hidden problem, often underestimated. It is much more common than the data available suggest. Unfortunately, the incidence is expected to grow with the progressive increase in the elderly population in the future. The aim was to examine the available literature in the last 5 years to define the state of art on this phenomenon, with particular regard to the nursing role in elderly abuse, focusing on the possible types of mistreatment, the motivations and preventive interventions. Articles published in the last 5 years regarding the mistreatment of the elderly were selected, by using scientifically recognized databases such as PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medline, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge. Several keywords were used for the query among which were: “elderly abuse” and “elderly abuse in nursing home”. Moreover, to better understand the entity of the phenomenon, we also searched the corresponding keywords for child abuse. Considering the Scopus database, only 78 out of 1,342 published articles in the last 5 years deal with abuse of the elderly in relation to nursing, representing a very small part (5.81 %) of the considered sample. Comparing the number of articles, the ratio child/elderly is equal to 1/0.04, underlying the poor interest of research on this phenomenon. Moreover, it was observed that elderly abuse in nursing homes is still underreported in both original articles and reviews. Despite the aging of the population, elderly abuse and neglect still remain hidden problems, overlooked and also underestimated in the literature.

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Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, via De Sanctis, snc, 86100, Campobasso, Italy

    Graziamaria Corbi, Evgeniya Ivshina & Carlo Pietro Campobasso

  2. Department of Criminology, University of Bari, Piazza Giulio Cesare, 70100, Bari, Italy

    Ignazio Grattagliano

  3. Translational Medical Sciences, University of Naples “Federico II”, via Pansini 5, 80131, Naples, Italy

    Nicola Ferrara & Angela Solimeno Cipriano

  4. “Salvatore Maugeri” Foundation, IRCCS, Institute of Telese Terme, Telese Terme, BN, Italy

    Nicola Ferrara

Authors
  1. Graziamaria Corbi
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  2. Ignazio Grattagliano
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  3. Evgeniya Ivshina
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  4. Nicola Ferrara
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  5. Angela Solimeno Cipriano
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  6. Carlo Pietro Campobasso
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Graziamaria Corbi.

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Corbi, G., Grattagliano, I., Ivshina, E. et al. Elderly abuse: risk factors and nursing role. Intern Emerg Med 10, 297–303 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-014-1126-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-014-1126-z

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