Nursing Home Resident Abuse-Who is the Perpetrator?

We know anyone can be a victim of elder abuse. We also know anyone can be a perpetrator. With that in mind, the results of a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine might be surprising to you…. or not.  The study found that in about 20% of the cases, the perpetrator was another resident. The Prevalence of Resident-to-Resident Elder Mistreatment in Nursing HomesResident-to-Resident Elder Mistreatment in Nursing Homes explained that “[r]esident-to-resident elder mistreatment (R-REM) in nursing homes can cause physical and psychological injury and death, yet its prevalence remains unknown.”  The full article requires a subscription but the summary available offers this information:

Results: 407 of 2011 residents experienced at least 1 R-REM event; the total 1-month prevalence was 20.2% (95% CI, 18.1% to 22.5%). The most common forms were verbal (9.1% [CI, 7.7% to 10.8%]), other (such as invasion of privacy or menacing gestures) (5.3% [CI, 4.4% to 6.4%]), physical (5.2% [CI, 4.1% to 6.5%]), and sexual (0.6% [CI, 0.3% to 1.1%]). Several clinical and contextual factors (for example, lower versus severe levels of cognitive impairment, residing on a dementia unit, and higher nurse aide caseload) were associated with higher estimated rates of R-REM…

Conclusion: R-REM in nursing homes is highly prevalent. Verbal R-REM is most common, but physical mistreatment also occurs frequently. Because R-REM can cause injury or death, strategies are urgently needed to better understand its causes so that prevention strategies can be developed.

There was a webinar on the topic earlier in the spring. Slides from the webinar are available here. There is also an abstract from the 2014 report available on the National Criminal Justice Reference Service and the report is here.