gms | German Medical Science

Background: The different regional dynamic of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany requires regionally adapted pandemic management concepts that should be built on national and international recommendations and evidence-based approaches.

Objectives: The interdisciplinary research project egePan Unimed (development, testing and implementation of regionally adaptive care structures and processes for evidence-based pandemic management coordinated by university medicine) aims to identify and evaluate regional best practices in German pandemic management across healthcare settings. As part of the sub-project “Regional healthcare structures", the pandemic management in different nursing care settings was surveyed.

Design and methods: A nationwide online-survey among a geographically representative sample of 1,271 home care services, 1,006 nursing homes, 326 hospitals and 455 care support points in Germany was conducted in spring 2021. Target population are nursing or facility directors. Primary outcome are the experienced benefits, harms, barriers and facilitators and lessons learned for the future regarding the measures undertaken to protect people in need of care from infections and to balance this protection against other goods like social participation and autonomy. Descriptive statistical and content analyses will be carried out, complemented by inferential tests to explore hypothesized associations between certain pandemic management measures and experienced outcomes.

Results: At the congress, results across all four target settings will be presented.

Conclusions: Findings from this survey will provide an overview of regional pandemic measures undertaken to protect the most vulnerable people in nursing care, including a comprehensive assessment of the measures’ feasibility and potential benefits and harms at individual and societal levels.