Elder abuse education: past, present, and future

Elder abuse awareness, intervention, and prevention efforts have inevitably included calls for increased education for health care, legal, protective services, and financial services professionals and pre-professionals, in part due to low levels of awareness across disciplines. Education is needed to increase capabilities and capacities to detect and effectively respond to abuse, increase confidence among professionals, improve identification and substantiation, meet legal mandates, and prevent and reduce harm. This article will highlight key historical events in elder abuse education, how these disciplines have addressed professional and pre-professional education, modalities of training, and current and future challenges facing elder abuse education.