Supporting the resilience and retention of frontline care workers in care homes for older people: A scoping review and thematic synthesis

Johnston, Lucy; Malcolm, Cari; Rambabu, Lekaashree; Hockley, Jo; Shenkin, Susan D.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to ensure that strategic and operational approaches
to retain high quality, resilient frontline care home workers, who are not registered nurses, are
informed by context specific, high quality evidence. We therefore conducted this scoping review to
address the question: What is the current evidence for best practice to support the resilience and
retention of frontline care workers in care homes for older people?
MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, MedRxiv, CINAHL, ASSIA, Social Science Premium were
searched for literature published between 2010 and 2020. The search strategy employed
combinations of search terms to target frontline care workers in care homes for older people and the
key concepts relevant to resilience and retention were applied and adapted for each database.
Thirty studies were included. Evidence for best practice in supporting the resilience and retention
specifically of frontline care workers in care homes is extremely limited, of variable quality and lacks
generalisability. At present, it is dominated by cross-sectional studies mostly from out with the UK.
The small number of intervention studies are inconclusive.
The review found that multiple factors are suggested as being associated with best practice in
supporting resilience and retention, but few have been tested robustly. The thematic synthesis of
these identified the analytical themes of - Culture of Care; Content of Work; Connectedness with
Colleagues; Characteristics and Competencies of Care Home Leaders and Caring during a Crisis.
The evidence base must move from its current state of implicitness. Only then can it inform
intervention development, implementation strategies and meaningful indicators of success. High
quality, adequately powered, co-designed intervention studies, that address the fundamentally
human and interpersonal nature of the resilience and retention of frontline care workers in care
homes are required.

Citation

Johnston, L., Malcolm, C., Rambabu, L., Hockley, J., & Shenkin, S. D. Supporting the resilience and retention of frontline care workers in care homes for older people: A scoping review and thematic synthesis

• Working Paper Type: Preprint
• Deposit Date: Mar 4, 2021
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2749183