The Australian aged care royal commission began in February 2019. This long overdue enquiry into the quality of aged care and issues, such as elder abuse, continues to investigate the findings from the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Protecting the Rights of Older Australians from Abuse first published in 2016.
The ALRC made forty three (43) recommendations in their report for law reform which would “safeguard older people from abuse and support their choices and wishes”. Dr Julie Mackenzie is a senior legal officer at the ALRC. In an interview released in 2017, Dr McKenzie discusses some of the main areas of reform recommended for aged care.
This assessment task provides you with an opportunity to learn and apply fundamental critical appraisal strategies used to assess the quality of peer-reviewed literature. In this particular piece of work you will be focussing on the issue of elder abuse. However, this same approach to peer-reviewed evidence can be applied to any facet of your practice throughout your nursing/midwifery career.
You will also gain a comprehensive insight into the background and prevalence of elder abuse in aged care, and develop a “toolkit” of principles and processes of care (e.g., elder abuse screening tools or health literacy practices) that will be part of your everyday care of the older person.
Finally you will use the knowledge acquired throughout this and previous units to develop a research question about this highly emotive current issue which has, and will continue to, affect your practice since your first day in nursing/midwifery.
In researching the background to this assessment task it is highly likely that you will encounter some confronting information about the care of older people and elder abuse. We hope that, as our colleagues, the emotional nature of this complex issue inspires your drive to provide safe, high quality evidence-based care with older members of the community.
The following instructions provide a guide to the requirements and format of this assessment task. Use headings and subheadings to provide yourself and the reader with a logical structure to your work.
- Introduction (approximately 200 words)
Introduce the scope and context of the paper
Outline key features to be addressed in the body (i.e. background, literature appraisal and research question) of your work.
- Literature Appraisal (approximately 800 words)
As a starting point for your literature review, we have provided you with four (4) publications which address one or more of the recommendations in the ALRC report. In an attempt to familiarise yourself with appraising the quality of any literature you are using throughout this paper, you are required to appraise the quality of one (1) of the publications provided by answering the appraisal questions below. These questions are adapted from the Critical Appraisal Skills Program suite of literature appraisal tools.
Choose one (1) of the following studies (click on doi link to access via library):
Yon, Y., Mikton, C. R., Gassoumis, Z. D., & Wilber, K. H. (2017). Elder abuse prevalence in community settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 5(2), e147–e156. doi:10.1016/s2214-109x(17)30006-2
De Donder, L., De Witte, N., Brosens, D., Dierckx, E., & Verté, D. (2015). Learning to Detect and Prevent Elder Abuse: The Need for a Valid Risk Assessment Instrument. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 191, 1483–1488. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.583
Pillemer, K., Burnes, D., Riffin, C., & Lachs, M. S. (2016). Elder Abuse: Global Situation, Risk Factors, and Prevention Strategies. The Gerontologist, 56(Suppl 2), S194–S205. doi:10.1093/geront/gnw004
Roberto, K. A., Brossoie, N., McPherson, M. C., Pulsifer, M. B., & Brown, P. N. (2013). Violence against rural older women: Promoting community awareness and action. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 32(1), 2–7. doi:10.1111/j.1741-6612.2012.00649.x
Once you have chosen and familiarised yourself with the study, clearly and concisely answer the following questions.
Quality appraisal questions (use the questions as headings)
Describe the aim of the study?
Discuss how the study addressed the research question?
Discuss the overall results of the study?
Discuss the level of evidence the paper provides.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study in relation to theory, policy and/or practice implications?
Sample Solution
