Smartphone-based COVID-19 support for care home staff

目前认为，养老院的居民和接受社区护理的人感染Covid-19的风险很大。我们依靠护理院的工作人员来照顾这个非常脆弱的群体，几乎没有什么支持。尽管护理院工作人员在体弱患者的一般护理方面经验丰富，但在学习如何安全管理受Covid-19影响的患者以及如何防止感染传播给他人时，他们承受着巨大的压力。此外，护理协会最近报告说，自大流行开始以来，护理工作者的心理健康问题显著增加，而且缺乏帮助工作人员应对压力和焦虑的资源。该项目将开发并提供一个免费的、短期的、高影响力的培训项目，所有护理人员都可以通过智能手机访问。该方案将涵盖如何进行医学观察，如测量血压和氧气水平，以便与远程临床小组联络，确保对病情较严重的患者进行评估，以便进行进一步治疗。培训模块将由护理机构和护理人员自己通过点对点网络和社交媒体在护理人员之间共享。该课程包括自我评估部分和结业证书。这是一种创新的方法，将支持和培训护理人员，尽量减少对他们的时间和工作职责的干扰。基于智能手机的路线使内容易于访问，并创建了一种机制，随着政策和程序的调整，向护理人员提供更新。cognant集团在为医疗保健专业人员和患者构建视觉沉浸式健康教育模块方面拥有丰富的经验，并具备在短时间内开展该项目的基础设施。这包括一个由高技能和经验丰富的开发人员、临床医生、作家和动画师组成的团队。影响扩展基金将使cognant集团能够扩大护理人员的培训方案，涵盖更多的主题，例如如何识别和管理居民康复后的长期健康问题，以及如何在这个压力很大的时期管理自己的心理健康，特别是压力、焦虑和抑郁。它还将提供必要的资源，以增加社会媒体活动，以推动进一步参与该计划，并寻求官方认可的模块，以提高可信度。

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.