{"id":7515,"date":"2021-03-03T11:22:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T09:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interdem.org\/?p=7515"},"modified":"2021-03-03T11:22:47","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T09:22:47","slug":"covid-blog-14-coronavirus-and-dementia-in-care-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/?p=7515","title":{"rendered":"COVID blog #14: Coronavirus and Dementia in Care Homes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact\u00a0on\u00a0those who live and work in care homes.\u00a0In England,\u00a0a\u00a0study\u00a0of 9,081 care homes found that 56%\u00a0reported at least one confirmed\u00a0case of COVID-19 and\u00a0that 20% of residents and 7% of staff tested positive\u00a0(Comas-Herrera et al 2020).\u00a0Around half of all coronavirus\u2013related deaths in England are believed to have taken place in care homes.\u00a0Since the beginning of the pandemic, care home\u00a0staff\u00a0have been experiencing heightened\u00a0stress, burnout and trauma, dealing with new and unusual circumstances, which many were unprepared for.<\/p>\n

In June 2020,\u00a0Dr Andrea Capstick received\u00a0funding by the University of Bradford to carry out research on the experiences\u00a0of\u00a0staff\u00a0working in care homes\u00a0with people living with dementia during the coronavirus pandemic.\u00a0Twenty members of the care workforce and three members of a Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) advisory group were recruited. The\u00a0resulting study,\u00a0Coronavirus\u00a0and Dementia in Care Homes\u00a0(CoDeC)<\/a><\/strong>,<\/strong> captured\u00a0the impact of the pandemic on those\u00a0working in care homes\u00a0by collecting a range of\u00a0data, including spoken, written and photographic testimony about their experiences.<\/p>\n

Key\u00a0findings\u00a0suggested\u00a0that\u00a0the social care workforce in dementia care\u00a0felt frightened and traumatised<\/strong> by\u00a0events during the\u00a0pandemic, and that they often felt\u00a0marginalised<\/strong> and ‘invisible’ by comparison with NHS staff:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was all that support for\u00a0NHS, as in you know, this is what they need. They need the PPE, they need them \u2026 but we needed it as well and we\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0actually get hold of it. We had to ring\u00a0round the local vets and dentists asking for gloves, because our order of gloves wasn’t guaranteed to come. So, we were sort of beg,\u00a0borrow\u00a0and steal them from whoever we could get them from.\u201d (P05)<\/em><\/p>\n

A rain window- how I felt and what was happening around me. Window contact happening in care homes, dark clouds finding it hard to see out through this.\u201d (P17)<\/em><\/p>\n

Participants had frequently\u00a0found official Covid-19 guidance confusing and difficult<\/strong> to follow:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cI\u00a0don’t\u00a0think anybody wanted to literally be led\u202fby their\u202fhands, we felt just very overwhelmed that there was no\u202fclear direction. There was a lot of questions being raised by family members that we\u00a0didn’t\u00a0have\u202fanswers for. A lot of questions being raised by staff around\u202ftheir safety\u202fand\u202fwellbeing\u202fthat we\u00a0didn’t\u00a0have answers for.\u201d\u00a0(P02)<\/em><\/p>\n

Staff found that social distancing and quarantine arrangements exacerbated the confusion<\/strong> already experienced by people living with dementia, and that this,\u00a0combined with the bar on family visits,\u00a0led\u00a0to\u00a0deterioration<\/strong> in the well-being of their client group.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we went on isolation [Henry\u2019s\u00a0wife]\u00a0was\u00a0no longer able to come in to be with him.\u00a0She still would come daily to visit him at his window but there was no touch exchanged, no holding of hands, washing his face or giving him a kiss.\u00a0 He declined quickly after this and\u00a0passed away\u00a0with his wife at his side (thankfully she was able to come in to visit in person during his final days).\u201d\u00a0(P04)<\/em><\/p>\n

Almost all participants mentioned feeling powerless and guilty<\/strong> about some aspect of the care they had been involved in providing:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou kind of doubted yourself, that you’re not offering enough, when you used to, like, referring to services and sort of coordinating and navigating that care for somebody. But feeling quite powerless that you\u00a0can’t\u00a0do that\u201d (P16)<\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, participants\u00a0also\u00a0told us of many\u00a0creative coping strategies <\/strong>\u202fthey had adopted\u00a0to deal with current circumstances and shared the amazing teamwork<\/strong> that have enabled services to keep running:<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought this care home really appreciated the psychological impact of social contacts and really thought out-the-box, going above and beyond to promote contact for their residents who were not on ground-floor\u00a0levels.\u00a0Just a shame the council\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0allow it to go ahead.\u201d\u00a0(P27)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Things that helped me cope, wax melts in the evenings to help be calm and relax, especially during some late evening working which was required due to increasing work demands.\u201d<\/em> (P17)<\/p>\n

What will happen in the aftermath of Covid19? Uncertainty<\/strong> about the future was also highlighted as a concern:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“This picture symbolises my concerns for the future – the uncertainty of which way to turn and whether we are going in the right direction.\u201d (P11)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>During the project, participants wrote a series of blog posts that provide a unique insight into the experience of Covid-19 in care homes. These blogs have been posted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Overall, our results intensify the need to ensure care home staff is supported to recover and\u00a0build resilience in the aftermath of Covid-19.\u00a0Finding ways to best to support this under-researched population is vital and will enable\u00a0care homes\u00a0to retain their experienced staff. We are now working with participants to co-design a booklet to share participants\u2019 testimonies and aiming to help care home staff look after themselves and people living with dementia. more research\u00a0also\u00a0needs to be done to\u00a0enable\u00a0them\u00a0to retain their experienced staff in difficult times.<\/p>\n

If you would like to find out more about the study and\/or be involved in this or similar research, please contact Dr Andrea Capstick on a.j.capstick@bradford.ac.uk<\/p>\n

Dr Ana Barbosa, Mrs Clare Mason, and Dr Giorgia Previdoli were also involved in the project.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact\u00a0on\u00a0those who live and work in care homes.\u00a0In England,\u00a0a\u00a0study\u00a0of 9,081 care homes found that 56%\u00a0reported at least one confirmed\u00a0case of […] ","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7516,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515\/revisions\/7516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interdem.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}