Qualitatively Evaluating Virtual Care Use in Long-Term Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, long-term care (LTC) homes had to make the shift to primarily offering virtual physician care to ensure the health of residents. This shift led to challenges such as supporting consistent cellular and Wi-Fi connection and supporting residents with high care needs by using virtual care. To look further into these challenges, my research will explore how LTC residents and staff in British Columbia's Fraser Health region experienced the effectiveness and equity of virtual care during the pandemic. My research will contribute to two CIHR Catalyst studies that seek to evaluate virtual care use in LTC during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspectives of different user groups. The key findings from these groups will then be used to support and tailor virtual health so that it be used in a way that is able to support continuing use in the future in LTC homes. For my thesis research, I will identify appropriate virtual care domains to guide interview questions asked to physicians, family care partners, LTC residents and staff and then conduct one-on-one interviews. I will then take the results from both CIHR studies and triangulate them to find constant themes found in both so as to identify key take-away messages. My research will be used to directly support enhancing the effectiveness and equity of virtual care in LTC in the Fraser Health region and beyond. This research is important because virtual care was already on the rise in LTC homes and is expected to increase in the future.