Identifying barriers to caring for older adults during the coronavirus pandemic: A local needs assessment

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected older adults. Older adults not only have worse coronavirus outcomes but also face significant disruptions in their medical and home care, and social support networks. The pandemic highlights the importance of geriatric and dementia services and the ongoing shortage of health professionals within these fields. We collaborated with Alzheimer's Association Connecticut to develop an e-curriculum to educate caregivers on how best to care for affected seniors during this public health crisis. Methods: We set out to design a novel, blended-learning intervention to improve COVID-19-related geriatric and dementia education. Stakeholder discussions and semi-structured interviews with caregiver support staff and educators were carried out as part of a local needs assessment. Four central themes were identified during these interviews and are now being used to develop an interactive animation-based curriculum on the challenges of administering care for older adults during the pandemic. Results: Our initial focus group with caregiver support staff and educators identified the following key challenges 1) social isolation, 2) caregiver fatigue, 3) safety issues, and 4) difficulty navigating the healthcare system with COVID-19. We are developing 10 minute educational videos that focus on each of these four themes and incorporate 2-D vector animation and whiteboard style teaching. An additional video will discuss the biology of COVID and why elderly/cognitively impaired adults are at increased risk. Conclusion: Through a local needs assessment, we identified four themes as barriers to providing care for older adults in the COVID-19 era. This information will be used to create an e-curriculum to increase caregivers' confidence and comfort with supporting older adults during the current health crisis. This content may also facilitate important discussions beyond COVID-19 as challenges like caregiver burden and social isolation are not unique to the pandemic.