Learning, internalisation and integration of the COVID-19 pandemic in healthcare workers: A qualitative document analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented health crisis that impacted healthcare systems worldwide. This study explores how Spanish healthcare workers learned, internalised and integrated values and work behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on the personal sphere. This documentary research, using images, narratives and audiovisual content, was framed within the interpretative hermeneutic paradigm. Categories and subcategories emerged after a final theoretical sampling that focused on the analysis. Data triangulation between researchers favoured theoretical saturation. A total of 117 images and 27 texts were selected. The analysis identified three stages: bewilderment, seeking functionality in the chaos and integrating chaos into care. The data reflects how the need for security and knowledge, and the exhaustion and frustration caused by the initial working conditions, prompted adaptive responses. These responses involved focusing on problem-solving and strengthening group sentiments and solidarity. Subsequently, the data indicates the acceptance of new structural, organisational and communication aspects. The findings of the analysis will contribute towards finding a framework that can help understand community health crisis events.

Active listening, shared decision-making and participation in care among older women and primary care nurses: a critical discourse analysis approach from a gender perspective.

BACKGROUND: Nursing care for older women represent a challenge worldwide due to its characteristics. When communication is impaired between primary care nurses and older women living alone, an imbalance in power relations occurs. The main objective of this study is to analyse the power relations between older women and primary care nurses in situations of active listening, shared decision-making and participation in care. METHODS: We developed a qualitative study in southern Spain using a discursive and gender approach. We used purposeful sampling to interview older women who lived alone and received home nursing care. Simultaneously, we conducted focus groups with primary care nurses who provided home care to older women. A linguistic analysis of the transcripts was carried out. RESULTS: Nine semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with older women who lived alone and two face-to-face focus groups with four primary care nurses in each. The discourse of the participants demonstrated an imbalance in power relations. Influenced by work overload, active listening was considered a privilege in primary care nurses´ discourse. Regarding shared decision-making, older women´s discourses revealed "mirages" of real situations where they thought they were deciding. Participation in care was difficult since older women saw themselves as a nuisance in nurses´ presence, and primary care nurses did not facilitate older women's engagement. Older women weren´t considered when organising home visits and had interiorised a subordinated feeling. Similarly, a strict sense of identity made primary care nurses feel powerful in their relationships with older women. CONCLUSIONS: The discourse of older women represented them as victims of a hostile panorama whilst they were sometimes satisfied with the deficient care received. The discourse of primary care nurses used more discursive strategies to represent themselves as professionals committed to caring. However, it also revealed deficiencies in care, discriminatory elements, and feelings of being limited by their working conditions. Active listening to older women and engagement in decision-making readjust empower the older women. Attending to the needs and concerns of primary care nurses could recalibrate the power imbalance between them and healthcare organisations.

A deep learning model for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis based on patient clinical records.

BACKGROUND: Dementia, with Alzheimer's disease (AD) being the most common type of this neurodegenerative disease, is an under-diagnosed health problem in older people. The creation of classification models based on AD risk factors using Deep Learning is a promising tool to minimize the impact of under-diagnosis. OBJECTIVE: To develop a Deep Learning model that uses clinical data from patients with dementia to classify whether they have AD. METHODS: A Deep Learning model to identify AD in clinical records is proposed. In addition, several rebalancing methods have been used to preprocess the dataset and several studies have been carried out to tune up the model. RESULTS: Model has been tested against other well-established machine learning techniques, having better results than these in terms of AUC with alpha less than 0.05. CONCLUSIONS: The developed Neural Network Model has a good performance and can be an accurate assisting tool for AD diagnosis.

Integrating shared decision-making, expressing preferences and active participation of older adults in primary care nursing: a systematic review of qualitative studies and qualitative meta-synthesis.

OBJECTIVES: To systematically synthesise the results of primary qualitative studies on how community-dwelling older adults experience shared decision-making processes, express preferences and actively participate in care. DESIGN: Systematic review of qualitative studies and qualitative meta-synthesis. METHODS: We focused on studies about community-dwelling participants aged ≥65 undergoing a health-disease process circumscribed to a primary healthcare setting, and the central theme should focus on either shared decision-making, expressing preferences or patient participation. We searched the following databases: MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus and PsycINFO (time publication frame 2012-2022). We excluded studies in those cases where the qualitative results were not analysed or unrelated to the phenomenon addressed, phenomena were not clear enough to be included or the setting did not occur in the community. RESULTS: A total of 12 studies were included in this meta-synthesis. We appraised the quality of the selected studies through Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Checklist. The metasummary comprised the frequency and intensity of qualitative patterns across the included studies. The meta-synthesis revealed four influential elements in their interaction: recognising personal qualities, facing professional characteristics, experiences of discrimination and a double-edged context. CONCLUSIONS: The phenomena studied were influenced by how older people approached their role in their binomial relationship with healthcare professionals. Those with a reinforced self-concept were better aware of health-disease-related situations regarding shared decision-making and the importance of being communicatively assertive. Professional characteristics were also crucial in how older people modulated their acting ability through their personality, communication skills and the approach healthcare professionals used towards older adults. Situations of discrimination generated through an imbalance of power inhibited the expression of preferences and hindered the active participation of older people. The context surrounding the participants influenced all these situations, key in tipping the balance between a therapeutic and a harmful side. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42022363515.

Analysing Power Relations among Older Norwegian Patients and Spanish Migrant Nurses in Home Nursing Care: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach from a Transcultural Perspective.

Power relations in care are the link between patients and nurses regarding communication and the ability to act in this context. It can be affected when there is cultural interference between members, putting mutual understanding at risk in healthcare situations. This study analyses power relations in healthcare situations between older Norwegian patients and Spanish migrant nurses regarding active listening, shared decision-making, and patient participation. We performed a hermeneutical study endorsed in critical discourse studies framework from a transcultural perspective. A purposive sampling included older Norwegian patients living alone and Spanish migrant nurses working in Norway. Eleven face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with older patients and four via videoconference with migrant nurses. The analysis followed hermeneutic considerations by Crist and Tanner, and linguistic analysis was performed. Shared decision-making and active listening situations sometimes showed a power imbalance that negatively influenced older Norwegian patients. However, Spanish migrant nurses were also conditioned by care organising institutions. This power triangle negatively affected the relationship between the older patients and migrant nurses, resulting in a lack of communication, personnel, time and trust. The migratory experience influenced the care provided by Spanish migrant nurses, shaping a series of cultural competencies acquired through the migratory process.

"With your age, what do you expect?": Ageism and healthcare of older adults in Spain.

INTRODUCTION: Ageism could influence the relationship between older patients' meeting needs and healthcare professionals' answers. AIMS: To highlight the experience of older adults with healthcare systems, how they perceive ageism from their healthcare providers, and to explore the relationship between perceived ageism and self-perception of aging (SPA). METHODS: We conducted an exploratory qualitative study. The participants were 14 women over 65 who lived alone in their homes. RESULTS: Professional responses ignored the expression of preferences of the older patients and excluded them from decision-making processes. These answers influenced older patients' use of health services. Moreover, the negative aspects predominated in a SPA influenced by the internalization of stereotypes and a relationship weighed down by ageist behaviors on the part of health professionals. CONCLUSION: Explicit situations of ageism influence an imbalance in power relations between older patients and healthcare professionals, a misuse of health services, and a negative SPA.

Regulatory emotional self-efficacy and anxiety in times of pandemic: a gender perspective.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown and containment measures have instigated substantial changes in our daily lives and have affected many people's mental health. This paper reports two studies exploring gender-based differences with regard to the impact of COVID-related confinement on individuals' self-efficacy to regulate negative emotions (RESE-NE) and anxiety. Methods: Study 1 (cross-sectional; 269 participants; 52% women) explored the evolution of RESE-NE and anxiety. To this end, participants assessed their status at two time points: a retrospective assessment of the period before confinement in Spain, and a current assessment during confinement. Study 2 (longitudinal; 114 participants; 72.2% women) explored the evolution of the variables by adding a post-confinement time point and analyzed the mediating role of RESE-NE in the positivity-anxiety and resilience-anxiety relationships. Results: The results confirmed that: (a) RESE-NE decreased and anxiety increased more among women than among men during confinement (Study 1); (b) women recovered their pre-pandemic levels of mental health more slowly than did men following confinement; and (c) the mediating role of RESE-NE could be observed in the two relationships under analysis. Conclusion: In practical terms, the research highlights the need to pay special attention to women undergoing mental health interventions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to the differential burden that the pandemic may entail for men and women and to the contrasting social roles traditionally attributed to them. From the gender differences identified, it is possible to infer how stereotypes and social roles influence the behavior and mental health of men and women, leading them to cope differently with stressful situations such as confinement.

Effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention to reduce social isolation and loneliness in community-dwelling elders: A randomized clinical trial.

AIMS: To assess the effect of a multicomponent intervention on reducing social isolation and loneliness and improving the quality of life in community-dwelling older adults. DESIGN: A cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial. METHODS: A total of 56 older adults participated in the control group and 63 older adults in the experimental group. The intervention consisted of 6 home-based face-to-face sessions, intercalated with 5 telephone calls and was conducted by nursing students and volunteer staff with experience in the subject. The study was conducted between April 2018 and December 2019. In terms of statistical analysis, several procedures were carried out: a statistical analysis per protocol and intention to treat, considering isolation, loneliness and quality of life as endpoints; a comparison of paired means, to analyse the behaviour of the outcome variables at baseline and the end of the study; and finally, a binary logistic regression analysis, considering social support as a dependent variable. RESULTS: The study results do not show the effectiveness of the modified CARELINK programme, analysed as a whole, on the decrease in social isolation or loneliness or the improvement in HRQL. However, a detailed analysis of the behaviour of some of the variables during the study indicates some results that deserve to be commented on. Comparing the mean confidential support scores between the experimental and control group at the initial and final stages shows significant differences in the analysis by protocol, and close to statistical significance in the analysis by intention to treat. Comparing the paired means obtained in the experimental group, an improvement in emotional loneliness scores was found. Finally, the variables associated with the social support of the subjects at the end of the follow-up period were as follows: having people who help them and mobility. CONCLUSION: Although the results obtained do not allow us to affirm that the intervention programme is effective, these same results point to improved confidential support and emotional loneliness in older adults participating in the intervention. Having people to help them and a greater degree of mobility are factors favouring the decrease in social isolation. IMPACT: This study suggested that modified CARELINK, a multicomponent intervention performed by trained volunteers, could improve confidential support in community-dwelling older adults. It also reports the importance of considering the level of mobility and support networks as determinants of the improvement caused by the intervention.

Emotional Universe of Nurse Case Managers Regarding Care for Elderly at Risk in Spain: A Hermeneutical Study.

The role of nurse case managers (NCM) involves a rarely visible emotional labor, even more when their role focuses on the care of elders at risk (EAR). Motivated by the lack of qualitative research on the emotional universe of NCM, this study explores the emotional universe (EU) of NCM regarding the care they provide to EAR in primary health care as well as the reasons that generate these emotions. An interpretative-phenomenological approach was implemented in southern Spain, with a purposive sampling that included nurses playing the NCM role for at least three years. Data collection was conducted in two periods (between September 2019 and July 2022). The primary collection tool was the semi-structured individual interview, with starting categories based on Bisquerra's EU taxonomy. The analysis followed Ricoeur's considerations, using the Nvivo software. In the NCM's EU, the recognition of the social phenomena stands out, with an open feeling of empathy regarding the desire of the EAR to continue living at home. However, there was also helplessness, resignation, disappointment, and frustration when EAR rejected their proposals. Furthermore, the system's limitations aroused compassion in the NCM and made them go beyond the limits of their role. This EU requires that their role be valued more, and higher responsiveness must be enforced to improve EAR care.

Conditions for Feasibility of a Multicomponent Intervention to Reduce Social Isolation and Loneliness in Noninstitutionalized Older Adults.

AIMS: To identify the factors conditioning the feasibility of an intervention to reduce social isolation and loneliness in noninstitutionalized older adults from the perspective of the intervention agents. DESIGN: A Dimensional Grounded Theory study conducted from December 2019 to January 2020. METHODS: Twelve participants were recruited from an experimental study developed in a health district of a southern Spanish city. Data were collected through focus group meetings, individual interviews, biograms, anecdote notebooks, and the field diaries of two participants not included in the other techniques. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. FINDINGS: Findings were divided into three themes: (a) the elderly between the walls of loneliness, economic difficulties, losses, and the past; (b) intervention agents/volunteers between the walls of inexperience in the management of psychological/emotional processes, lack of moral authority, and difficulty in planning results adapted to the (elderly) person; and (c) intervention between the walls of (interest in) company and assistance at home, lack of involvement ("waiting for you to save them"), and withdrawal/"abandonment". CONCLUSION: A profile of the specialized intervention agent, professionalized (or at least a mentored agent), with both technical and relational competencies; a clear understanding of the purposes of the intervention (empowerment, as opposed to having company or being helped with household chores) and the commitment to active participation by the elder; or adequate management of the completion of the intervention (flexibility, attachment management) are some of the main factors contributing to the feasibility of these approaches. IMPACT: The findings have potential implications in the field of primary healthcare because primary and community healthcare services can implement corrections to the proposed intervention and ensure its effectiveness under feasible conditions. The nurse is shown as the most appropriate profile to conduct this intervention, although more research is needed to analyze the feasibility of this type of intervention in the daily practice of community nurses.