Patterns of knowing in professional practice in dealing with the abuse of older people

The abuse of older people by someone they know and should be able to trust is a complex problem thatfaces nurses working in aged care. From the beginning days of dealing with this social problem, a great deal has been learned about elder abuse, about victims and perpetrators and about the difficulty of working in this area. A conceptual framework of knowing, such as that developed by Barbara Carper (1978), is a valuable framework to guide knowledge organisation and utilisation in confronting cases of abuse in clinical practice. This article briefly considers Carper's four ways of knowing to show how they can influence professional practice in general, and dealing with elder abuse in particular.