Educating novice practitioners to detect elder financial abuse: a randomised controlled trial

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Public Health
• Medical Education

Background:

• Elder financial abuse is a significant concern requiring identification and intervention by health and social care professionals.
• An educational intervention was developed to improve practitioners' decision-making skills in identifying elder financial abuse.
• The study aimed to test the effectiveness of this decision-training intervention on novice practitioners' detection abilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based, evidence-based educational intervention designed to enhance the detection of elder financial abuse among health and social care practitioners.
• To assess if the training improves practitioners' ability to accurately identify elder financial abuse compared to a control group.

Main Methods:

• A parallel-group, randomized controlled trial using judgement analysis was conducted with 154 pre-registration health and social care practitioners.
• Participants were allocated to an intervention group receiving web-based training or a control group.
• Case sets were judged at pre-test and post-test, with ratings correlated against expert consensus standards.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in rating capacity were observed between groups at pre-test.
• The intervention group showed a statistically significant improvement in detection ability post-training, with ratings becoming more similar to expert judgments.
• The control group's detection capacity did not improve, indicating a positive moderate effect of the intervention.

Conclusions:

• The freely available, web-based decision-training aid is an effective, evidence-based educational resource.
• Health and social care professionals can utilize this tool to enhance their capacity for detecting elder financial abuse.
• The resource is accessible online at http://www.elderfinancialabuse.co.uk.