Primary care physicians' awareness and level of investigation in elder abuse and negligence

Aim: Senescence is a period in which individuals' addiction increases, they are more vulnerable to accidents, their physical and mental skills decrease and they need to deal with plenty of chronic diseases. There are significant negative consequences of this period both for the elderly individual and the caretakers of the individual. One of the most effective methods of preventing negative consequences of elder abuse is to suspect the existence of it and try to reveal the abuse. This study aims to investigate primary care physicians' level of awareness in understanding the signs of elder abuse and negligence and their reaction when they are consulted by elderly patients for any particular reasons. Method: This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in December 2018 with 268 primary care physicians who worked in central districts of Izmir. The number of physicians was divided proportionally based on physician-to-population ratio in 11 districts and randomly selected physicians in each district participated in the study on voluntary basis. A questionnaire which includes physicians' demographic data and their experience in investigation of elder abuse, and sample cases which consist of the possibility of elder abuse and negligence are prepared as data collection tools. It was investigated that whether the participants would suspect the possibility of the existence of elder abuse and how they would react to given cases. In the analysis and evaluation of research data IBM SPSS (The Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 22.0 was utilised and chi-square, t-test, correlation and ANOVA test were conducted. P-value<0.05 was accepted statistically significant. Findings:115 of 268 participants were female (%42,9), mean age was 49,76±7,39 (min:29 max:67) and mean year of experience was 24,82±7,65 (min:1 max:40). 64 of the participants (23,8%) received training about elder abuse. The findings of the study revealed that the mean score of the suspicion of abuse was 7,47±7,98 and the mean score of taking actions against them was 4,79±3,229 (min :0, max:16) The reaction of the patients' relatives, the lack of instituional support and the lack of time were found as the most significant obstacles and providing evidence was found as the most significant problem for the management of elder abuse. 145 participants stated that identification, management, and investigation of elder abuse and negligence take a lot of time. Results: In the study, it was found that primary care physicians did not intervene adequately even when they suspected elder abuse and negligence sufficiently frequently.