Covid-19 is receding as vaccination rates grow and summer approaches, but we haven’t seen the back of it just yet! Covid’s emergence in 2020 exacerbated existing issues in the care sector. Alongside this, Covid in itself was a big challenge and highlighted how the care sector can be deeply impacted by global pandemics that may happen again in future, which has prompted contingency planning.
When Covid-19 reached the UK it had a critical impact on care, causing deaths, isolation, issues with procuring PPE and managing social distancing, whilst providing quality care, and recruitment and training were impacted by the hastily arranged lockdowns. Care workers made huge physical and emotional sacrifices, including working longer hours due to the sector’s recruitment problems and need for staff to self-isolate at times.
While nowadays the situation is considerably better and the legal requirements are much lower than they used to be, the legacy impact of covid has left staffing gaps for many care organisations and practical challenges that remain. The CQC published a list of innovations and changes care providers made during the pandemic, with many of these utilising software. You can see the list here. We also have a summary of the key solutions here for you; some of them will likely already be in place to help service users if they need to isolate:
Communications; Supporting residents to use apps like Skype or Whatsapp to stay in touch with their families and giving personalised email/newsletter updates, having a family Whatsapp group to keep families updated.
Well-being of service users; live-streaming activities/entertainment to isolating service users, including virtual physio sessions, having self-isolating staff deliver virutal wellbeing care by calling with residents and doing virtual activities with them.
Infection control; sinks in halls, colour-coordinating staff shirts by area, fun virtual education videos for teaching PPE usage and infection control
Information & Guidance; web pages and emails with FAQs to keep people clearly informed on guidance, engaging information videos, having dedicated virtual contact points for providing guidance to family members and staff.
Safe staffing + supporting them; measures to avoid public transport during peak-infection rates such as carpooling using company vehicles, offering staff virtual wellbeing support by enabling them to book supportive video calls, enabling remote work options for staff where appropriate.
💡 Final Thoughts:
Although Covid-19 is receding overall, its essential to have strong care contingencies in place for future outbreaks as well as individual infections to assure quality care. Having these to hand as business as usual can help to ensure future outbreaks do not hit the sector as hard as Covid-19 did.
Virtual solutions can help care receivers to feel more connected, happier, and healthier in the face of infections and self-isolating. This applies if there are outbreaks or isolated infections, it is important to keep everyone feeling connected and receiving the care they deserve.
Want to make your pandemic and infection resilient? We can help. We can help you to find solutions and implement them smoothly. Click here to book in a no-obligation chat, we’ll be glad to help you!
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