Physicians' and Nurses' Responses to Abuse of the Elderly:

Abstract

A survey of Alabama physicians in the fields of internal medicine, family practice and general practice and a survey of nurses in the areas of home health and community health care were conducted in 1987 and 1988 concerning elder abuse and Alabma's thirteen-year-old mandatory reporting/protective services law. The authors found that phyisicans did not understand the law but nurses did. Physicians' attitudes toward the law were ambivalent. Nurses had more negative attitudes toward the law. These attitudes appeared to be based on poor response by authorities to earlier reports.