Effective pandemic preparedness in LTC homes requires rapid and comprehensive implementation of promising practices and policies. The study will investigate a virtual quality improvement (QI) collaborative of six LTC homes in British Columbia, Canada to facilitate shared learning across multiple QI projects to address gaps in pandemic preparedness by teams involving family and friend caregivers, care aides, nurses, healthcare professional, managers and directors. An implementation science team will investigate: 1) How can QI teams use virtual collaboration to facilitate a systematic QI approach to pandemic preparedness? 2) How can the virtual collaboration tool be used to scale-up and spread promising practices and policies for pandemic preparedness across multiple homes through a QI collaborative? Using a concurrent mixed-methods study design, the virtual collaboration tool use and QI activities will be assessed and interviews will be conducted with QI team members about their experiences with the virtual QI collaborative approach.   

The research will be completed by December 2021 and expected outputs include publishing results in academic / professional journals. The QI results and lessons learned will inform implementation of promising practices for pandemic preparedness in other LTC homes for scale-up and spread.