Exploring barriers to care home research recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic: The influence of social media recruitment posts and public sentiment.

INTRODUCTION: Recruitment of care home staff to research studies is recognised as challenging. This was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated negative media portrayal of care home workers. Social media use has surged since the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, offering a plausible approach to understanding the barriers to care home research recruitment and gaining insight into public perceptions of care home workers. AIM: To utilise comments from two Facebook recruitment posts to: 1) gain an understanding of potential barriers to recruitment of healthcare workers (HCWs) in UK care homes, and 2) explore public sentiment towards care home research and care homes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This cross-sectional study analysed comments from two Facebook posts (available June-October 2021) advertising a separate study on psychological support for care staff during the pandemic. This study was situated within a larger investigation into the mental health and wellbeing of care home staff and employed both qualitative analysis and quantitative methods (word count and correlations between words used and between posts). RESULTS: Three themes were identified from the qualitative analysis: support, mistrust and blame. There was a greater use of words associated with support and negative emotive words in post 2. Post 2 comments featured significantly more choice words and first-person singular pronouns than post 1 which indicated a resentful sentiment from those who advocate freedom of choice and control. Discussion of mistrust towards researchers was most prominent in post 1 indicating the importance of relationship building between researchers and HCWs in UK care homes. With attribution to blame, there was a larger range of negative emotion words than positive emotion words. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Taken together our findings offer novel insights into why recruitment to care home research during the pandemic including the use of social media might be problematic. Social media is a useful tool for recruitment but should not be considered as a one-time input. Researchers should pro-actively engage with the study population from the start using co-design with resident and public groups to support recruitment and ensure these populations are accurately represented within research.

Uptake and effects of psychological first aid training for healthcare workers' wellbeing in nursing homes: A UK national survey.

AIMS: Psychological First Aid is a brief intervention based on international guidance from the World Health Organisation. Free to access online training in the intervention was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic in UK. We aimed to determine the uptake of Psychological First Aid training among healthcare workers in care homes in the UK and to assess its effects on their wellbeing. DESIGN: This was a sequential mixed methods design. METHODS: Healthcare workers (nurses and carers) working in care homes in the UK were surveyed about their uptake of Psychological First Aid, their stress, coping efficacy and the key concepts of Psychological First Aid (safety, calmness, hopefulness, connectedness, and accomplishment). Those that completed the Psychological First Aid training were asked to share their experiences via qualitative survey. Data collection was conducted between June and October 2021. Analyses included descriptive statistics and regression analysis. A six step thematic analysis was used to interpret the qualitative data. RESULTS: 388 participants responded to the survey. The uptake of Psychological First Aid training was 37 (9.5%). Psychological first aid was a significant predictor for coping efficacy (ß = 17.54, p = .001). Participants with a physical or mental health condition experienced higher stress and lower coping regardless of PFA training. Four themes were identified from the qualitative analysis: self-awareness and growth, relationships with others, overcoming stress and accessibility. CONCLUSION: While this study suggests some benefits to healthcare workers in care home settings undergoing PFA the poor uptake of the training warrants further investigation. IMPACT: Care home staff need psychological support. This gap remains as few completed PFA training. This is the first study in UK and worldwide to look at the effects of psychological first aid on stress and coping in this population and it warrants further investigation.

Psychological first aid for workers in care and nursing homes: systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic has produced unprecedented challenges across all aspects of health and social care sectors globally. Nurses and healthcare workers in care homes have been particularly impacted due to rapid and dramatic changes to their job roles, workloads, and working environments, and residents' multimorbidity. Developed by the World Health Organisation, Psychological First Aid (PFA) is a brief training course delivering social, emotional, supportive, and pragmatic support that can reduce the initial distress after disaster and foster future adaptive functioning. OBJECTIVES: This review aimed to synthesise findings from studies exploring the usefulness of PFA for the well-being of nursing and residential care home staff. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted across 15 databases (Social Care Online, Kings Fund Library, Prospero, Dynamed, BMJ Best Practice, SIGN, NICE, Ovid, Proquest, Campbell Library, Clinical Trials, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Ebsco CINAHL, and Cochrane Library), identifying peer-reviewed articles published in English language from database inception to 20th June 2021. RESULTS: Of the 1,159 articles screened, 1,146 were excluded at title and abstract; the remaining 13 articles were screened at full text, all of which were then excluded. CONCLUSION: This review highlights that empirical evidence of the impact of PFA on the well-being of nursing and residential care home staff is absent. PFA has likely been recommended to healthcare staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. The lack of evidence found here reinforces the urgent need to conduct studies which evaluates the outcomes of PFA particularly in the care home staff population.

Are context-specific measures of positive emotion regulation more predictive of mania risk and mood symptoms than trait measures?

BACKGROUND: A number of strategies used to regulate positive affect (i.e. dampening and positive rumination) have been identified as having particular relevance to hypomanic personality (a proxy measure of mania risk). However, previous findings have been mixed and it is suggested that this may be the result of lack of consideration of the context in which emotion regulation (ER) is occurring. AIMS: This study aimed to investigate (a) if use of specific ER strategies predicts mood across social- and goal-related contexts, and (b) if the relationship between hypomanic personality and mood is moderated by greater use of ER strategies. METHOD: One hundred and seventy-four participants (mean age 20.77 years, SD = 2.2) completed an online survey assessing (i) hypomanic personality, (ii) self-reported tendencies to use ER strategies for positive emotion, (iii) tendencies to use these strategies in response to both high- and moderate-intensity positive affect in personally generated social- and goal-related contexts, and (iv) current affect. RESULTS: Trait use of ER strategies was more predictive of hypomanic personality and mood symptoms than context-specific measures; however, this relationship did not hold up for hypomanic personality and mood symptoms when accounting for current affect. Trait dampening was predictive of low mood symptoms but did not moderate the relationship between hypomanic personality and low mood. DISCUSSION: While trait measures of ER were more predictive of mania risk and mood symptoms than context-specific measures, further work is needed using experience sampling methods in order to capture the regulatory processes individuals are using in particular contexts, in real-time.

Emotion regulation strategies in mania risk: A systematic review.

OBJECTIVES: Difficulties in emotion regulation may contribute to the development of mania. This review aimed to assess how emotion regulation strategies reported by individuals at risk of mania compare with clinical and nonclinical controls. METHODS: Search terms relating to mania risk and emotion regulation were entered into three databases. Sixteen studies were included. RESULTS: Mania risk was typically associated with overall endorsement of emotion regulation strategies, particularly dampening, and positive and negative rumination. CONCLUSIONS: Findings were limited by overall lack of evidence for individual strategies, lack of consideration of key mediating factors and reliance upon self-report designs.