RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Everyday life in a Swedish nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative interview study with persons 85 to 100 years
JF BMJ Open
JO BMJ Open
FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group
SP e048503
DO 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-048503
VO 11
IS 6
A1 Qarin Lood
A1 Maria Haak
A1 Synneve Dahlin-Ivanoff
YR 2021
UL http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/6/e048503.abstract
AB Objective To understand and report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the everyday lives of frail older persons living in nursing homes by exploring their experiences of how the pandemic-related restrictions had influenced them and in what way.Design Empirical qualitative interview study.Setting A publicly run nursing home in an urban area in Sweden in June 2020. The nursing home had visitor restrictions, cancelled activities and physical distancing requirements since March 2020.Participants A total of 10 persons, 85–100 years, living in a Swedish nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic, were recruited through nursing home management and interviewed in June 2020 using medically approved visors and physical distancing.Analysis Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, which involves familiarisation, coding and definition of themes. Transcripts were coded into data-driven categories before being organised into categories that described and explained the data.Results The analysis resulted in the main theme ‘It is like living in a bubble’, that describes everyday life in the nursing home during the pandemic as a world of its own in which the older persons felt both protected and isolated. This is described in four subthemes: living 1 day at a time, without fear of the virus; feeling taken care of; having limited freedom and missing out on the little extras.Conclusions Contributing to the growing area of COVID-19-related research, our findings provide novel insights into how pandemic-related restrictions in nursing homes represent a risk of isolating older people from the outside world and diminishing their freedom. Put in relation to the previous research, these findings could be applied beyond the pandemic, to develop research and practice that puts focus on how to support older people to decide for themselves how to spend the rest of their lives.Data are available upon reasonable request. The qualitative data generated and analysed as part of the current study are not publicly available due to the information provided to the participants when obtaining their informed consent, stating that all attempts would be made to maintain confidentiality. De-identified data are, however, available upon reasonable request to enable review, and will be stored for 10 years at the University of Gothenburg. All data are covered by the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (offentlighets-och sekretesslagen) and a confidentiality assessment (sekretessprövning) will be performed at each individual request. Permission from University of Gothenburg, the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, has to be obtained before data can be accessed.