Click here to download in PDF format This paper was prepared amid increasing concerns about the care of elderly patients in longstay settings and newspaper criticism of doctors' attitudes to older people.
Elder abuse takes many forms ranging from subtle interactions to acts which are frankly criminal.
What links the range of behaviours is that they occur in situations in which the victim is dehumanised. The abuser relates through power in the absence of clear thinking. Institutional abuse includes individual acts or omissions and managerial failings in which the regime of the institution itself may be abusive. The subject of elder abuse has generated an increasing body of literature but little specifically about the role of doctors. This paper aims to define the role of doctors in prevention, detection and management of abuse in institutions, to raise awareness, improve practice and to extend an understanding of a social, organisational and individual psychodynamic perspective to the aetiology and manifestation of abuse.