Who are we?
In response to reports of rising COVID-19 infections and associated deaths in Canadian long-term care homes, the Government of Canada and its partners invested $1.8 million to strengthen Canada’s pandemic response in long-term care homes. The funding was awarded to 22 Implementation Science Teams from across Canada. The Implementation Science Teams were funded to evaluate the outcomes and impacts of interventions designed to keep residents, their caregivers, and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. By testing interventions or policies in real-world settings, the teams expect their findings to help inform and strengthen current pandemic responses as well as mitigate risks associated with possible future outbreaks of the COVID-19 or other infections.
Our Implementation Science Team is specifically focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating an intervention aimed at successfully re-integrating caregivers into long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. This intervention will be co-developed with each of the long-term care homes with whom we are partnering, which will involve meeting with a group of residents, caregivers, and staff from each long-term care home on an ongoing basis. During these meetings, we provide residents, caregivers, and staff with the space and time to share their lived experiences regarding the role of caregivers in long-term care homes over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. We listen closely to the stories being shared so that we can ensure that our intervention meets the needs and preferences of these residents, caregivers, and staff. We then bring our intervention ideas to our next meeting for more input and feedback from long-term care residents, caregivers, and staff.