Who’s in the House? Staffing in Long-Term Care Homes before & during COVID-19 Pandemic
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Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2022
Type of Work
Department
Program
Citation of Original Publication
Vellani, Shirin, Franziska Zuniga, Karen Spilsbury, Annica Backman, Nancy Kusmaul, Kezia Scales, Charlene H. Chu, et al. “Who’s in the House? Staffing in Long-Term Care Homes Before and During COVID-19 Pandemic.” Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, (April 2022). https://doi.org/10.1177/23337214221090803
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Subjects
Abstract
Critical gaps exist in our knowledge on how best to provide quality person-centered care to long-term care (LTC) home residents which is closely tied to not knowing what the ideal staff is
complement in the home. A survey was created on staffing in LTC homes before and during the
COVID-19 pandemic to determine how the staff complement changed. Perspectives were
garnered from researchers, clinicians, and policy experts in eight countries and the data provides
a first approximation of staffing before and during the pandemic. Five broad categories of staff
working in LTC homes were: 1) those responsible for personal and support care, 2) nursing care,
3) medical care, 4) rehabilitation and recreational care, and 5) others. There is limited availability
of data related to measuring staff complement in the home and those with similar roles had
different titles making it difficult to compare between countries. Nevertheless, the survey results
highlight that some categories of staff were either absent or deemed non-essential during the
pandemic. We require standardized high-quality workforce data to design better decision-making
tools for staffing and planning, which are in line with the complex care needs of the residents and
prevent precarious work conditions for staff.