Study setting: Nursing homes in two regions of Portugal (Algarve and Alentejo) (April–July 2020)

Description: We examined nursing home Covid-19 preparedness and the personnel’s perceived safety, including nursing home resident safety culture, in two regions of Portugal; we also sought to understand differences among nursing homes in those two regions. We followed a two-stage voluntary-based engagement with nursing homes: first, nursing homes self-assessed their Covid-19 preparedness using a checklist (n=138); and second, a follow-up video/phone call with a nursing home for a checklist walkthrough discussion (n=83). Later, when residents and workers in nursing homes of both regions were tested for Covid-19, a web-based, self-administered survey was conducted among personnel (n=720). We used descriptive statistics to characterize attributes of participating nursing homes and survey respondents, and to examine missing data patterns. We summarized the Covid-19 preparedness with the geometric mean across facilities on the compliance within each larger group of items in the checklist. We synthesized data from open-ended questions (both from the checklist and follow-up calls) into major categories to capture insights from the facilities’ contributions. We assessed correlations and performed an exploratory principal axis factor analysis on a 10-item question in the first module of the survey. Composite response frequencies relative to the personnel’s resident safety culture were computed by averaging positive, negative and neutral responses.

Study concluded, submission to peer-review journal by December 2020.

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