Long-Term Trajectories of Older Adults Served by an Emergency Department/Hospital-Based Elder Mistreatment Response Program.

Background: An emergency department (ED) visit or hospitalization provides an opportunity to identify elder mistreatment and initiate intervention, but this seldom occurs. To address this, we developed the Vulnerable Elder Protection Team (VEPT), a novel interdisciplinary consultation service. We explored the long-term trajectories of patients receiving VEPT evaluation and intervention.

Focusing on Caregiver Neglect: A Novel Strategy for Mistreatment of Older Adults Screening and Intervention.

Mistreatment of older adults is common and has serious health consequences but is under-recognized and under-reported. Screening for mistreatment of older adults and initiation of intervention in primary care clinics may be helpful, but the value of existing tools is not supported by evidence. We argue that shifting the focus to individual sub-types of mistreatment of older adults can provide improved approaches to screening and ultimately to intervention.

Emergency department and hospital-based programs responding to elder mistreatment: developing consensus about an idea whose time has come.

Elder mistreatment is common, serious, and under-recognized, with Emergency Department and hospital clinical encounters offering a potential but currently unrealized opportunity to identify and help older adults experiencing mistreatment. Interdisciplinary emergency department and hospital-based response teams represent a promising care model to address this. This manuscript describes two such teams and introduces a special issue dedicated to this work.

Examining ethical issues that arise in providing ED/hospital care for patients experiencing elder mistreatment and approaches to address them.

Clinicians in the emergency department and hospital who treat patients experiencing elder mistreatment (EM) can expect to encounter challenging ethical dilemmas. Collaboration with ethics and EM consultation services offers teams an important opportunity to improve patient-centered outcomes and address value-based concerns when treating these patients. This article describes the role of a hospital clinical ethics consultation service and best practices for collaboration between ethics and EM consultation services.