Elder abuse: a scoping review of the hospital social work role

Elder abuse is predicted to rise, and hospital social workers receive professional training to respond. A scoping review was conducted to map the breadth and extent of existing literature on hospital social worker roles in response to elder abuse. Key words searched across six databases and five journals were "social work*," "hospital*," "elder*," "abus*" and their derivatives to identify relevant literature. Included literature was peer reviewed and published since 2000. A manual citation search was also undertaken. Thematic analysis and descriptive reporting followed. A total of 32 publications were included. These were predominantly from the United States, focused on the Emergency Department setting, and were not social work-specific research. Identified themes were 1) social workers as key members in the multidisciplinary team, 2) screening for abuse and responding in the Emergency Department 3) psychosocial assessments are important, and 4) service linkages are a key role of the social worker.