Identification of Risk and Development of an Evidenced-Informed Strategy for the Safe Reintegration of Families into Long-term Care Homes

About the project

  • Long-term care (LTC) homes across New Brunswick introduced COVID-19 policy restrictions to keep residents safe during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.  
  • The requirement to educate, train, and monitor visitors’ adherence to COVID-19 policy restrictions, added extra pressure on the already stretched LTC resources. 
  • The program aimed to support visitor education and training around infection prevention and control in LTC facilities by developing and testing educational tools and identifying risks for the transmission of pathogens. This was carried out in three phases: 
    • Phase 1: Current education, training, and support strategies delivered in LTC homes across the province were identified and assessed. 
    • Phase 2: A series of educational documentary videos on Infection, Prevention, and Control (IPAC) in LTC was developed and tested.  
    • Phase 3: A toolkit of bilingual educational resources for infection prevention, and control was developed to support safe visitation in LTC.  
  • The project evaluated participants’ performance and compliance with IPAC guidelines and assessed differences between control and intervention groups.  
    • Intervention group: Received training through the program’s educational documentary videos. 
    • Control group: Received in-person training as usual according to each LTC facility’s guidelines. 
  • 80 long-term care visitors, including 50 women and 30 men, participated in the project evaluation. 

Conclusions and lessons learned

  • Findings from assessments of education and training practices across LTC homes highlighted various methods of training, resources, and challenges in delivering education.  
  • Overall, participants who received educational video training demonstrated improvements in their adherence to safety practices such as handwashing, hand hygiene, and PPE donning and doffing. 
  • Frailty among participants in LTC, including those who needed mobility/hearing aids posed a challenge for educational video training intervention.  

Recommendations

  • Acknowledge IPAC as an LTC home priority and ensure mandatory IPAC training for visitors. 
  • Visitor re-training is needed and compliance management policies around visitor education and training. 
  • Ensure long-term care homes are allocated the necessary resources to implement government-mandated practices.  
  • Consider diverse needs of visitors, including accessibility, literacy levels, physical, psychological, social and sensory challenges while carrying out mandatory visitor requirements. 

To learn more read the complete project findings (PDF 137 KB)