gms | German Medical Science

Background/research question: Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, drastic measures were implemented restricting social contact between residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) and visitors within facilities in most countries. From the very beginning, concerns about negative consequences of social isolation have been expressed [1]. Leaders and experts in the field called for innovative interventions to ameliorate anticipated negative impact of contact restrictions on nursing home residents. However, most concerns stem from pre-pandemic research on loneliness and social isolation. Although most residents have received vaccination against COVID-19 by now, there remain uncertainties regarding the future development of the pandemic and reimplementation of contact restrictions might again be discussed during the ongoing pandemic.

The objective of this review is to identify and map

1.

evidence of direct and indirect consequences of contact restrictions on mental and physical health as well as functioning of long-term care residents during the COVID-19 pandemic;

2.

research activities related to strategies and interventions responding to social isolation of long-term care residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: To conduct this scoping review we use the framework first proposed by Arksey and O'Malley [2]. Accordingly, our scoping review followed five stages: (1) identifying the research questions; (2) identifying potentially relevant studies; (3) selecting studies; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing and reporting the results. Results are reported in accordance with PRISMA-ScR Checklist [3].

The search for relevant studies was conducted in June 2021. We performed an initial search of MEDLINE via PubMed and translated this search strategy to six other databases. This scoping review considers research activities published as full articles, brief communications, study protocols, and conference abstracts, published in peer-reviewed journals or submitted to peer-reviewed journals (pre-prints). Search results were imported into the Covidence software. Screening and further reviewing were executed by two researchers each. Currently, data extraction is ongoing. Submission of results is scheduled for November 2021.

Preliminary/expected results, outlook: This Scoping Review will improve the understanding of consequences of contact restrictions on LTCF residents and help decision makers to balance future decisions. It will provide a first overview of tested interventions to ameliorate consequences of the lack of in-person visits.

Competing interests: Keine Interessenskonflikte.