Front-line Nursing Home Staff Provide Insight on Advance Care Planning in a Crisis

Abstract

The dynamic changes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic brought instability in advance care planning (ACP). ACP includes eliciting and documenting goals, values, and preferences for medical treatments, and requires considerable skill and resources. The goal of this study is to describe the nursing home staff experience with ACP including barriers and facilitators to goals of care discussions, which were revisited for all residents during nursing home COVID-19 outbreaks in 2020. This cross-sectional interview-based study interviewed 17 nursing home staff who facilitated ACP with residents and families during an initial COVID-19 outbreak, representing 7 Midwest nursing homes. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted (November 2020-April 2021), and included the Patient Health Questionaire-4 (PHQ4) and Impact of Event Scale-6 (IES-6) to explore the emotional impact of the pandemic. Qualitative thematic analysis was carried out to investigate the nursing home staff experience with goals of care discussions including the psychological impact on staff. Nursing home staff described barriers to successful advance care planning in a crisis such as personal protective equipment (PPE), visitor restrictions, and lack of disease specific clinical knowledge. Self-reported stress was high, with 53% of participants screening positive for potential severe depression and anxiety (PHQ-4 total score ≥ 9) and 29% screening positive for possible post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on the IES-6 (mean score ≥ 1.75). Interview data offered evidence of the sources and nature of psychological impact of a COVID-19 outbreak. Participants experienced decreased stress when they reported increased knowledge, increased experience, decreased mortality, resolution of outbreak, and access to vaccination. Nursing home staff described pandemic advance care planning as impersonal and uncomfortable compared to prior experiences. In future crises, maintaining in person conversations or equivalent interactions and supporting staff with adequate clinical knowledge and personal mental health resources is important in ACP.