“Guilt, tears, and burnout”
New research reveals the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the mental well-being of care home staff, residents and their families
“Guilt, tears, and burnout” – new research reveals the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the mental well-being of care home staff, residents and their families
The pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the mental well-being of care home residents, their families and staff, according to new research just published.
It calls for a new raft of support measures to help the mental health needs of all three groups after findings revealed the devastating impact caused by restrictions imposed by the government. The restrictions which were implemented across the sector were meant to protect residents and staff from COVID-19.
Ambiguity and interpretation of government guidance meant that many care homes were accused of discrepancies in visiting rights between family carers, with some respondents saying their friends and peers were able to visit relatives in care homes, yet they themselves were blocked.
The restrictions caused relationships between staff and families to break down. Communications such as resident health updates became poor or none existent, staff suffered from burnout and a growing anger from all parties against the restrictions became underpinned by a lack of trust in the restrictions themselves and their implementation.
The longitudinal qualitative study, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, is the first to examine the emotional journeys and impact on mental health of care home staff, residents, and families in the UK throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research illustrated that all groups had been significantly affected, and relationships have been, and remain, severely strained by the pandemic with an ongoing need for easily accessible mental health support to be implemented as quickly as possible.
The research, funded by the Geoffrey and Pauline Martin Trust also suggests that family carers were shown to grow progressively angry and emotionally upset about the lack of safe visits to their relatives.
According to the Office of National Statistics, during the peak of the first UK pandemic wave, around a third of COVID-19 related deaths were among care home residents (ONS, 2020).
Dr Clarissa Giebel, Senior Research Fellow at the Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast based at the University of Liverpool, who led the study, said: “Our findings clearly demonstrate how much care home staff, family carers, and residents seem to have been neglected and are continuing to suffer from that lack of support.
There needs to be adequate and easily accessible mental health and well-being support in place for everyone, for free, so that staff, family carers, and residents can start to process the emotional upheaval experienced over the past two years.”
Forty-two family carers and care home staff participated at baseline, with 20 family carers and staff followed up. The Interviews, which took place from October to November 2020, identified four predominant themes from all those involved.
– Developing anger and frustration which included escalating negative emotions towards care homes and a loss of trust
– Negative Impact on relationships meant some broke down and have never recovered
– Stress and burnout of staff
– Behavioural changes, and perceived impact on residents.
The feeling of abandonment also surfaced from interviews carried out for the research, which was a consequence of the restrictions, with one of the care home staff stating:
“At the start of this pandemic there were some residents that had dementia and they didn’t really understand what was going on, they thought their family members just didn’t like them anymore”.
One of the family members also interviewed stated:
“My wife got very upset about this she because she didn’t understand. She was talking about COVID it’s like talking to a child and she was very, very upset and now that obviously upset me. Now my son was with us and he ended up having to walk away from her he walked away from the window, he couldn’t stand watching her because she was it was upset.”
Another respondent said “When I Skype my mum…I’ve counted 20 different carers sitting with her and you think well why can’t I do that if 20 carers can sit there but me, who doesn’t go anywhere or doesn’t do anything…I’m not allowed to go in to see my own mother and do the same thing, it just doesn’t make any sense.”
Recommendations suggested by the research authors include care homes being funded to deliver access to packages of emotional support for their staff and relatives in times of crisis. This is to improve management of employee workloads which staff encounter during a pandemic and to adopt enhanced links between primary care provision and care homes. It can act as mechanism for facilitating signposting and referral of residents and relatives to occupational health or NHS support for staff.
It is suggested by implementing these recommendations the best quality of care can be maintained for care home staff, residents and their families.
Dr Clarissa Giebel has secured further funding to investigate in depth the mental health needs of paid and unpaid carers of older adults and those with dementia.
