Addressing the Long-Term Care Crisis: Identifying Opportunities for Improvement Using Rapid Reviews

BACKGROUND: Long-term care (LTC) facilities require urgent, evidence-based care renewal. During 2020 three medical student-driven research projects aiming to study care satisfaction, patient care team dynamics, and advance care directive effectiveness in a local LTC facility required a marked shift in approach due to COVID-19 regulations. METHODS: All three projects were re-invented as rapid reviews from their initial designs intended to provide a baseline for quality improvement projects. English-limited PubMed searches for publications within the past 10 years were undertaken. Review articles were prioritized and supplemented by individual studies. Students reviewed the initial abstracts, reviewed them with a supervisor/mentor, assessed the articles for quality, and synthesized major themes. RESULTS: A total of 52 publications were evaluated for the final synthesis of all three projects. Relevant information was retrieved for all three areas, suitable for local evaluation/intervention at micro, meso, and macro policy levels. CONCLUSIONS: Rapid reviews of issue-specific, long-term care literature are low resource avenues towards coordinated care improvement. They may also serve as rapid means for regular policy updates while providing next-generation care providers with improved LTC perspectives.