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Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic

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 o...

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Autores principales: Norrie, Caroline, Woolham, John, Samsi, Kritika, Manthorpe, Jill
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8652684/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34730260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13624
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author Norrie, Caroline
Woolham, John
Samsi, Kritika
Manthorpe, Jill
author_facet Norrie, Caroline
Woolham, John
Samsi, Kritika
Manthorpe, Jill
author_sort Norrie, Caroline
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-86526842021-12-08 Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic Norrie, Caroline Woolham, John Samsi, Kritika Manthorpe, Jill Health Soc Care Community Original Articles 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. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8652684/ /pubmed/34730260 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13624 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Health and Social Care in the Community published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Norrie, Caroline
Woolham, John
Samsi, Kritika
Manthorpe, Jill
Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title_full Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title_fullStr Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title_short Personal Assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: Their experiences during the Covid‐19 pandemic
title_sort personal assistants’ role in infection prevention and control: their experiences during the covid‐19 pandemic
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8652684/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34730260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13624
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