Abstract
Objective
describing by means of the evidence in the literature, the competences of doctors in hospital services in situations of violence against older people (VAOP).
Method
scope review with search in databases/platforms/searchers and grey literature covering Medline; VHL; Embase; CINAHL; Web of Science; BDTD, OpenGrey, OpenThesis, RCAAP, Portal de Teses e Dissertações da CAPES, DART-Europe E-theses Portal and Theses Canada Portal (Aurora and Voilà catalogs). The descriptors and keywords used, combined with the Boolean operators OR, AND, NOT were: “Physicians”, “Doctors”, “Attitude”, “Attitude”, “Knowledge”, “Knowledge”, “Behavior”, “Medical Care”, “Medical Care”, “Medical Care”, “Hospital Services”, “Hospital Services”, “Hospital”, “Hospitalists”, “Hospital Doctors”, “Older People Abuse”, “Older People Abuse”, “Physical Abuse”, “Older People Neglect ”, “Aged Abuse”, “Older People Mistreatment”.
Results
six papers were selected. There was a lack of knowledge on the topic and the approach, and of specific training. As for skills, the findings that most led doctors to suspect abuse were physical findings linked to appearance, hygiene and injuries - communication and relationship problems were little mentioned. In the attitude, there was a research of abuse in only 44% of the suspicions and low or null percentages on case reporting. Only one study explored the attitude towards negligence, where 24.8% reported to social services and 21.3% informed the police.
Conclusion
most cases of VAOP remain unnoticed and therefore unreported or unhandled. There are multiple problems regarding the competences of hospital doctors when dealing with such situations, a scenario that exposes the demand for measures to raise awareness, training, and encouragement to adequately deal with VAOP.
Keywords
Health Services for the Aged; Elder Abuse; Clinical Competence