Types of Elder Abuse

Types of Elder Abuse
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Elder abuse is any form of mistreatment or exploitation of senior or aged citizens. Elder abuse can take different forms, like physically harming them, threatening them to extort money and providing poor care or giving them little or no proper attention. A report from Special Investigation Division, Committee on government reform in the US published a report on abuse of the aged in nursing homes. The report indicated that 30% of those in the US were cited for abuse (Summers et al. 2006). The next subtitles are a discussion of types of elder abuse and possible ways of abolishing them.
Physical abuse.
This involves the use of any physical force that is likely to cause pain, injury or impairment. Common ways include beating, pushing shaping or slapping. Holding the elderly against their will and feeding them by force also amount to physical abuse. You can suspect physical abuse if you see burns, fractures or bruises on the aged. Signs of injury that are not ordinary are questionable. This can be protected by reducing movements of the elderly to minimize unnecessary contacts. However, physical abuse cannot be completely abolished because of how fragile the elderly become. They get weaker by day, and this makes it difficult to prevent contact like for example a handshake when being offered greetings.
Financial exploitation.
This is the improper or illegal use of the elder’s property for ones’ financial gain. The aged can easily experience financial exploitation which is covered in many forms including conning, outright theft or even fake authorization using forged signatures.

Misusing money and threatening an elderly to sign documents for the financial gain amount to financial exploitation. As it stands, financial abuse is at 12percent of cases of abuse against the elderly in the United States (Summers et al. 2006). You can easily know if an elderly is financially abused if he no longer receives bank statements or the caregiver has no other way of financing daily expenses. Financial exploitation can be reduced by picking or deciding that a reliable next of kin to take full control of the elderly account. This shows the reason why writing a will is necessary.
Healthcare abuse.
This type of abuse comes about if the people involved in the provision of healthcare services to the elderly do it with minimum attention. Actions rendered as abuse by the medics include providing unnecessary prescriptions or referrals, charging procedures that cannot be accounted for or providing treatments for medication that are of fraudulent nature. In overcoming this type of abuse, the government or society should set aside rules that govern medics on the type and attention they should give the elderly. They should also be given priority for treatment instead of letting them queue for long with other patients in the waiting bays. The state investigates complaints lodged in a formal way in nursing homes on abuse of the elderly and advocates for measures to protect them from any form of abuse by the public or dependants (Summers et al. 2006).
Reference
Summers, R. W., Hoffman, A. M., & American Public Health Association. (2006). Elder abuse:
A public health perspective. Washington, DC: USA.