Resident-to-Resident Aggression Prevalent in Residential Care

Among 800 personal care workers surveyed, 99.9% said they witnessed verbal resident-to-resident aggression in the past month, and 11.8% witnessed resident-to-resident aggression that was physical, according to study findings published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

“Resident-to-resident aggression probably represents the unmet personal needs of the perpetrators, thus a client-centered approach with a tailored care plan for individual residents would be beneficial,” researchers wrote, “and many researchers have advocated for person-centered care as an essential means for preventing resident-to-resident aggression.”

The 800 personal care workers in the study were from 29 residential care facilities in Hong Kong. The personal care workers provided proxy reports of incidents of resident-to-resident aggression they personally witnessed in the previous month.

According to the results, 99.9% of participants witnessed verbal, 11.8% witnessed physical, 3.1% witnessed sexual, and 18% witnessed unprovoked resident-to-resident aggression the month prior to the survey.

Physical aggression was associated with greater perpetrator and victim behavioral disturbances, dementia in the victim, and insufficient training of personal care workers, the study showed. Sexual resident-to-resident aggression was associated with higher perpetrator daily functioning. Unprovoked resident-to-resident aggression, meanwhile, was most likely to occur inside the resident’s room and was associated with greater perpetrator behavioral disturbances and perpetrator dementia.

“Although most of the personal care workers received training in dementia care, most considered the training as insufficient to manage the daily care of residents,” researchers wrote. “Involving frontline care professionals in the design and delivery of solution-oriented training could potentially address this gap and help prevent resident-to-resident in the long run.”

Reference:
Yan E, Lai DWL, Cheng ST, et al. Resident-to-resident aggression in long-term care facilities: Prevalence and risk factors. J Am Geriatr Soc. Published online December 15, 2022. doi:10.1111/jgs.18175