In Flemish nursing homes with smaller living groups and permanent care teams, there were fewer corona infections or deaths. That turns out from research by the Catholic University of Leuven and Radboud University Nijmegen. This applies to both residents and employees.
Four different characteristics would play a role in the lower number of corona infections: the size of the living group, the size of the establishment, the number of tasks employees have and the way in which care teams are composed. In nursing homes with fewer than seventeen residents in the living groups, an average of 17.5 percent of residents became infected with corona and 2.5 percent died of the disease. In living groups with more than 32 residents, this was 27.5 percent in infections and 5.1 percent in deaths.
Organizational changes
A survey was drawn up for the study, commissioned by the Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and Family Hilde Crevits. A total of 318 managements of nursing homes completed the questionnaire, which is about thirty percent of the organizations approached. According to Vermeerbergen, the results are clear. “We expected an effect, but the clarity of the figures surprised us.”
If employees take on several tasks within the living group, residents have more contact with the same people and therefore less chance of ‘new contacts’ that could lead to possible infections, explains researcher Lander Vermeerbergen. “In addition, it helps that employees in a small group see faster when things are going worse with a resident. If there is a quick response to this, the virus can spread less quickly.”
The research also shows that many nursing homes had capitalized on the advantages of smaller living groups during the corona crisis and implemented organizational changes for this. For example, 80 percent of the boards indicated that they had worked with permanent teams per living group and 40 percent said that they had made the living groups smaller. According to Vermeerbergen, these adjustments are “crucial” in the fight against future pandemics, although this takes a lot of time and energy. “In addition to the will and motivation to do things differently, sufficient framework, resources, space and time are needed to make changes possible.”