A Path to Prevention of Elder Abuse in Long-term Care. Prevalence Study Among Staff in Long-term Care.
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- This is an observational study: the protocol does not assign a study treatment.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Abuse Domestic, Abuse Neglect, Abuse Physical, Abuse Verbal. Basic parameters: 18 years — 69 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- Sweden
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Overview
Globally, studies indicated that 16% of community dwelling older adults have been exposed to some form of abuse in the past 12 months. Furthermore, a global meta-analysis about AOP in long-term care facilities used staff as respondents and found that the pooled estimate of overall self-reported perpetration of staff to resident abuse during the past 12 months was 64.2% (95% CI 53.3-73.9%). Similar findings was also reported in a study from Norway in which the overall prevalence of observed staff-to-resident abuse was 76% and 60% of respondents report self-perpetration of abusive acts during the past 12 months. Resident-to-resident aggression was even more common, observed by 88% of respondents. This study is part of the Swedish national research program APPEAL (A Path to Prevention of Elder Abuse in Long-term care) with the long-term goal to co-create an intervention for abuse of older people (AOP) in nursing homes together with stakeholders, i.e., staff, managers, care recipients and relatives. Study design and data collection: A cross-sectional study design will be used with slightly different data collection modes. 1. Population sample. Statistics Sweden combine data from the Swedish Occupational Register with data about industry codes (SNI-codes) to make a national randomized sample of staff working in home care services (n=12000) and nursing homes (n=11000) in Sweden. Data will be collected through a digital survey. Data will be combined with available register data from Statistics Sweden, including for example sex, age, civil state and occupational related data. 2. Workplace sample. Sweden has 290 Municipalities. The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) have an official categorization of the municipalities based on e.g., urban area size, proximity to a larger urban area, and commuting patterns. One municipality in each of the nine categories has been randomly selected for participation. In the randomization process, geographical location of the municipalities has been considered to assure national representativeness, meaning that in case several municipalities in the same geographical region were selected a new randomization was conducted. Staff in each selected municipalities will be invited to participate through managers in each organization. Data will be collected through a digital questionnaire. Organizations will be encouraged to set a side time at a staff meeting for completing the questionnaire. If this is not possible, a link to the questionnaire will be sent out by e-mail. Data will be collected anonymously. Material: The questionnaire used in the previously mentioned Norwegian study about AOP in long-term care facilities has been translated and culturally adapted. In addition, items about background characteristics of respondents as well as risk factors for AOP on both an individual and system level are included, e.g., workload and perceived support at the workplace and ageist attitudes. Analysis: Primary outcomes will be proportion of staff reporting different types of abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial abuse and neglect) in different relational contexts, i.e., self-perpetrated, staff-to-resident and relative-to resident abuse, and in long-term care facilities resident-to-resident abuse. Secondary outcome will be staff reported own exposure to different forms of abuse at the workplace, including by residents, co-workers, relatives and managers. Logistic regression analysis will be used to investigate associations between reporting different forms of abuse and potentially explanatory factors.
Primary outcome measures
- Self-reported perpetration of abuse [Time frame: Day1. Cross sectional study using only one point of data collection. Participants are enrolled by returing a questionnaire including items about abuse. The timeframe used in the questionnaire is experiences of abuse during the past 12 months.]
- Staff-to-resident abuse [Time frame: Day1. Cross sectional study using only one point of data collection. Participants are enrolled by returing a questionnaire including items about witnessing acts of abuse during the past 12 months.]
- Relative-to-resident abuse [Time frame: Day1. Cross sectional study using only one point of data collection. Participants are enrolled by returing a questionnaire including items about witnessing acts of abuse during the past 12 months.]
- Resident-to-resident aggression [Time frame: Day1. Cross sectional study using only one point of data collection. Participants are enrolled by returing a questionnaire including items about witnessing acts of abuse during the past 12 months.]
Secondary outcome measures (1)
- Staff exposure to abuse [Time frame: Day1. Cross sectional study using only one point of data collection. Participants are enrolled by returing a questionnaire including items about expsoure to abuse at the workplace during the past 12 months]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- Working in home care services or a long-term care facility in Sweden
- Working in direct contact with older adults (e.g., providing care, nursing, rehabilitation to older adults)
Exclusion criteria
- None
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: No
Study design
- Observational model
- Other
Study locations
Sweden · 1 center
- Linköping University — Linköping
Identifiers
NCT: NCT07494422 · 2026-01231-02