New Ways of Working? A Rapid Exploration of Emerging Evidence Regarding the Care of Older People during COVID19

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.