The impact of Covid-19-related distancing on the well-being of nursing home residents and their family members: a qualitative study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the consequences of Covid-19-related isolation and social restrictions on the well-being of nursing home residents and their family members, and to analyze how distancing has affected the relationships of family members with residents and the nursing home staff. Design: The data consist of 41 thematic one-on-one interviews conducted during May–December 2020 with family members of nursing home residents. Convenience sampling was utilized by asking several nursing homes in different parts of Finland to relay a contact request from the researchers to the residents’ family members. The main themes of the interviews were lockdown and visiting restrictions. Subthemes included the frequency of visits, other means of interaction, changes in the relationships of family members with their loved ones and with nursing home staff, and the feelings aroused by the situation. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim, resulting in 794 pages of data. Method: The qualitative study uses inductive content analysis. NVivo12 software facilitated the systematic coding of the data. Results: According to the family members, distancing aggravated the residents’ pre-existing conditions: they reported a sudden progression in memory disorders and significant deterioration in physical abilities, for example. Both residents and family members experienced anxiety, grief, and severe stress, and family members expressed concern that residents might die due to a lack of social contact and activity. Family members were also frustrated about not being able to touch their relatives or participate in their care, and therefore sometimes thought that their visits were useless. New forms of interaction with family members, introduced by the nursing homes, were appreciated. However, some family members perceived the interactional protocols as unfair and complained about insufficient information. Conclusions: The findings underline the need for nursing homes to implement a good interactional protocol. Overall, the results show that the measures taken to protect residents’ health during the Covid-19 outbreak were short-sighted in terms of the social dimension of well-being. It is therefore important to continue developing safe and humane solutions for interaction when social restrictions are in place. Tweetable abstract: Covid-19-related distancing has caused anxiety, grief, and severe stress for nursing home residents and their family members.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".