Dataset Information

Social contact patterns among employees in U.S. long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, December 2020 to June 2021.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

We measured contact patterns using social contact diaries for 157 U.S. long-term care facility employees from December 2020 - June 2021. These data are crucial for analyzing mathematical transmission models and for informing healthcare setting infection control policy.

Results

The median number of daily contacts was 10 (IQR 8-11). Household contacts were more likely partially masked than fully masked, more likely to involve physical contact, and longer in duration compared to facility contacts.

SUBMITTER: Zissette S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10604856 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Social contact patterns among employees in U.S. long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, December 2020 to June 2021.

Zissette Seth S Kiti Moses C MC Bennett Brady W BW Liu Carol Y CY Nelson Kristin N KN Zelaya Alana A Kellogg Joseph T JT Johnson Ii Theodore M TM Clayton Pam P Fridkin Scott K SK Omer Saad B SB Lopman Benjamin A BA Adams Carly C

BMC research notes 20231026 1

<h4>Objective</h4>We measured contact patterns using social contact diaries for 157 U.S. long-term care facility employees from December 2020 - June 2021. These data are crucial for analyzing mathematical transmission models and for informing healthcare setting infection control policy.<h4>Results</h4>The median number of daily contacts was 10 (IQR 8-11). Household contacts were more likely partially masked than fully masked, more likely to involve physical contact, and longer in duration compar ...[more]

PMID: 37884967

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Project description:ImportanceThe second year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw periods of dire health care resource limitations in the US, sometimes prompting official declarations of crisis, but little is known about how these conditions were experienced by frontline clinicians.ObjectiveTo describe the experiences of US clinicians practicing under conditions of extreme resource limitation during the second year of the pandemic.Design, setting, and participantsThis qualitative inductive thematic analysis was based on interviews with physicians and nurses providing direct patient care at US health care institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews were conducted between December 28, 2020, and December 9, 2021.ExposureCrisis conditions as reflected by official state declarations and/or media reports.Main outcomes and measuresClinicians' experiences as obtained through interviews.ResultsInterviews with 23 clinicians (21 physicians and 2 nurses) who were practicing in California, Idaho, Minnesota, or Texas were included. Of the 23 total participants, 21 responded to a background survey to assess participant demographics; among these individuals, the mean (SD) age was 49 (7.3) years, 12 (57.1%) were men, and 18 (85.7%) self-identified as White. Three themes emerged in qualitative analysis. The first theme describes isolation. Clinicians had a limited view on what was happening outside their immediate practice setting and perceived a disconnect between official messaging about crisis conditions and their own experience. In the absence of overarching system-level support, responsibility for making challenging decisions about how to adapt practices and allocate resources often fell to frontline clinicians. The second theme describes in-the-moment decision-making. Formal crisis declarations did little to guide how resources were allocated in clinical practice. Clinicians adapted practice by drawing on their clinical judgment but described feeling ill equipped to handle some of the operationally and ethically complex situations that fell to them. The third theme describes waning motivation. As the pandemic persisted, the strong sense of mission, duty, and purpose that had fueled extraordinary efforts earlier in the pandemic was eroded by unsatisfying clinical roles, misalignment between clinicians' own values and institutional goals, more distant relationships with patients, and moral distress.Conclusions and relevanceThe findings of this qualitative study suggest that institutional plans to protect frontline clinicians from the responsibility for allocating scarce resources may be unworkable, especially in a state of chronic crisis. Efforts are needed to directly integrate frontline clinicians into institutional emergency responses and support them in ways that reflect the complex and dynamic realities of health care resource limitation.

Dataset Information

Social contact patterns among employees in U.S. long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, December 2020 to June 2021.

Objective

Results

Publications

Social contact patterns among employees in U.S. long-term care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, December 2020 to June 2021.

Similar Datasets

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