Archival offender records analysis: examining patient abuses in Tennessee

This quantitative causal-comparative study was designed to examine potential relationships between independent variables (job level, dependency of patient, work environments, sex, and race) related to health care practitioner offenders and the dependent variable (types of abuse) in Tennessee from 2006 to 2015. A total of 227 practitioners who were either licensed, certified, or trained in their perspective professional practice or job level, convicted of abuse, physical/emotional abuse and financial abuse, were examined from criminal and civil dispositions. The Pearson’s Chi-square was used to evaluate the five research questions and test the null hypotheses for potential relationships. Additional testing with the Holm’s Sequential Bonferroni Method was used to control for Type I error for pairwise comparisons between variables. The chi-square results indicated strong relationships between job level, dependency of patient, and work environments with small but weak relationships for sex and race of the offenders and types of abuse. The results of this study indicated that financial abuse was prominent for all independent variables measured while physical/emotional abuse was secondary. Offenders with technical or advanced job levels committed 87.3% of financial abuse. Patients dependent on skilled care nursing were 60.7% more likely to experience physical/emotional abuse. Practitioners in private duty care committed 83.1% of financial abuse. Female offenders committed 37.1% of physical/emotional abuse compared to males who committed 75.7% of financial abuse. The findings for financial abuse was 74.0% of Caucasians offenders and 63.6% of minority offenders. The descriptive analysis examined variables relative to all offenders convicted of patient abuse, their position of professional authority and the work environments, as well as the dependency of the victims on care services