Smartphone-based COVID-19 support for care home staff

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Care home residents and those receiving community-based care are now recognised to be at great risk from Covid-19. We are relying on care home staff to look after this very vulnerable group of people with very little support. Although highly experienced in the general care of frail patients, care home staff are under tremendous pressure as they learn how to safely manage patients affected by Covid-19 and how to protect spread of the infection to others. Furthermore, care associations have recently reported a significant increase in mental health issues among care workers since the start of the pandemic, and a lack of resources to help staff cope with stress and anxiety. This project will develop and deliver a free, short, high impact training programme for all care staff to access via smartphones. The programme will cover how to conduct medical observations such as measuring blood pressure and oxygen levels in order to liaise with remote clinical teams to ensure that patients who develop more severe illness are assessed for further medical treatment. The training modules will be shared amongst care staff by care organisations and by staff themselves using peer to peer networks and social media. The programme includes a self-assessment component and a certificate of completion. This is an innovative approach which will support and train care workers with minimal disruption to their time and work duties. The smartphone-based route makes the content highly accessible and creates a mechanism to provide updates to care staff as policy and procedures are adjusted over time.Cognitant Group has experience in building visual immersive health education modules for both healthcare professionals and patients and has the infrastructure in place to undertake this project at short notice. This includes a team of highly skilled and experienced developers, clinicians, writers and animators. The Extension for Impact funding will enable Cognitant Group to expand the training programme for care workers, covering additional topics such as how to identify and manage residents’ long-term health issues post-recovery, and how to manage their own mental health, particularly stress, anxiety and depression, during this highly pressurised time. It will also provide the required resource to increase social media activities to drive further engagement with the programme, and to seek official endorsement of the modules for high credibility.