Addressing elder abuse in the U.S.

Dr. Laura Mosqueda, Dean and Professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, is raising awareness about the issue of elder abuse and shaping how it is addressed in medical schools, clinics and the national conversation.

Quotes from this episode

"Whenever an older adult comes into an emergency room or a primary care office with some sort of injury or wound, we almost always can find a reason other than abuse or neglect that it happens. So, we don't want to overcall it and over-accuse people, but we need to be aware that it's a possibility."

"Well, I think one of the important things as a primary care physician is that we do take a holistic approach to things, so that sometimes I joke around with my patients and I say, well, your cardiologist's job is to pay attention to your heart, and my job is to make sure that we remember the heart is attached to the rest of you, and how are we going to take care of your heart in the context of you. And then, even as importantly, in the context of your family and your social situation."

"There's remarkable work being done to help caregivers and this idea of caregiver stress, it's so important for caregivers who are under stress to recognize that within themselves, to not feel embarrassed or ashamed, and to reach out and accept help, which is very hard for a lot of us to do."

"One of my big jokes is nobody has ever thanked me for preventing their fall. If you go into oncology, it's a very heroic sort of specialty, and cardio thoracic surgery is very heroic. Geriatrics is not what you think of when you think of a heroic specialty. So it just doesn't have the same kind of oomph and excitement that other specialties do. But once you get in there, and you do some house calls, and you meet people who are 90 or 100 years old and hear their stories. For me, that's very inspiring."

Learn more about Dean Mosqueda and her work at keck.usc.edu/faculty-search/laura-mosqueda/