Journal of

Introduction and purpose: Number of elderly population is increasing and according to WHO estimation, this number rise up to 22% in 2050. Elderly are prone to several challenges such as elder abuse due to aging population. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate nurses' perception of elder abuse in the city of Tehran.

Materials and Methods: This Cross-sectional study was conducted by convenience sampling method to select 400 nurses from February to March 2014. Samples selected from nurses working in the emergency departments affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. A researcher-made questionnaire was used and the reliability was ensured using Cronbach's alpha (α =82%). SPSS version 13 was used to analyze the data via descriptive statistics.

Findings: Findings from this study indicated that mean age of our participants was 40.12 (SD=7.05) years old. Nurses perceived financial and sexual elder abuse as the most frequent type of elderly abuse.  

Conclusion: Nurses spend a large amount of time with patients compared to other health care practitioners which represent nurses as the frontline in proving care to elderly. Therefore, it is necessary to expand our knowledge about elder abuse and different type of abuse.