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Personal Assistants' role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic.
- Source :
- Health & Social Care in the Community; Sep2022, Vol. 30 Issue 5, pe1926-e1934, 9p, 1 Chart
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- Personal Assistants (PA) or client‐hired workers are directly employed by people needing care and support, often making use of government funding. In the context of Covid‐19, questions emerged about how this workforce is supported to practice safely. This paper reports PAs' understanding and views of infection control during the early months of the Covid‐19 pandemic in England. Telephone interviews were undertaken with 41 PAs between 16th April and 21st May 2020. PAs were recruited from a sample that had participated in a previous study in 2014–16. Interview questions focused on changes arising from the pandemic. Data were transcribed and analysed using Framework analysis. This paper focuses on PAs' perceptions of their role and responsibilities in preventing and managing infection. Arising themes were identified about barriers and facilitators affecting infection control in five areas: accessing information, social isolation, handwashing, hygiene, personal protective equipment and potential attitude to vaccines. Infection prevention and control are under‐researched in the home care sector generally and efforts are needed to develop knowledge of how to manage infection risks in home settings by non‐clinically trained staff such as PAs and how to engage home care users with these efforts, especially when they are the direct employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- INFECTION prevention
OCCUPATIONAL roles
VACCINATION
HEALTH services accessibility
PROFESSIONS
ATTITUDES of medical personnel
TELEPHONES
ATTITUDE (Psychology)
HYGIENE
INTERVIEWING
PREVENTIVE health services
SOCIAL isolation
QUALITATIVE research
ACCESS to information
SOUND recordings
DESCRIPTIVE statistics
HAND washing
PERSONAL protective equipment
COVID-19 pandemic
ALLIED health personnel
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 09660410
- Volume :
- 30
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Health & Social Care in the Community
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 158480045
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13624