Abstract
Health and social care staff have had to quickly adapt, respond and improve teamwork, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our objective was to rapidly summarize the emerging evidence of new ways of working in the care of older people during this period. We conducted an exploration of the emerging evidence within the timeframe of 1 March 2020 to 11 May 2020. To capture a broad perspective, we undertook thematic analysis of Twitter data which was extracted through a broad search for new ways of working in health and social care. For a more in-depth focus on the health and social care of older people, we undertook a systematic scoping of newspapers using the Nexis UK database. We undertook a validation workshop with members of the interprofessional working group of the Irish National Integrated Care Programme for Older People, and with researchers. A total of 317 tweets were extracted related to six new ways of working. There was evidence of using telehealth to provide ongoing care to patients; interprofessional work; team meetings using online platforms; trust and collaboration within teams; as well as teams feeling empowered to change at a local level. 34 newspaper articles were extracted related to new ways of working in the care of older people, originating in England (n = 17), Wales (n = 6), Scotland (n = 6), Ireland (n = 4) and Germany (n = 1). Four main themes were captured that focused on role expansion, innovations in communication, environmental restructuring and enablement. The results of this exploration of emerging evidence show that health and social care teams can transform very rapidly. Much of the change was based on goodwill as a response to the pandemic. Further analysis of empirical evidence of changing practices should include the perspectives of older people and should capture the resources needed to sustain innovations, as well as evaluate gaps in service provision.
Highlights
On the 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared that severe acute respiratory syndrome secondary to the novel coronavirus disease (SARS-COV-2) was a worldwide pandemic [1]
Identifying the Research Focus In April 2020 we held three video consultations with our college librarian (DS) during which we reviewed potential questions and scope before agreement on refinement. For this exploration of new ways of working in the health and social care of older people during COVID-19, we wanted to capture some of the emerging evidence from two sources: Twitter and newspapers
A total of 317 tweets were extracted relating to six new ways of working in health and social care during COVID-19 between 1 March 2020 and 11 May 2020
Summary
On the 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared that severe acute respiratory syndrome secondary to the novel coronavirus disease (SARS-COV-2) was a worldwide pandemic [1]. (19 August 2020) 1,962,958 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the European Union and the United Kingdom, including 179,963 deaths [2]. Research into a potential treatment and vaccine development is ongoing but caution has been urged that this will take time [3]. As a response to the pandemic, sweeping changes have occurred in health and social care systems to mitigate the virus [4,5,6]. The emerging research has found that Covid-19 disproportionately affects older people. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 6442; doi:10.3390/ijerph17186442 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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