A Qualitative Investigation of Professionals’ Perceptions of Working in Senior Care Organizations During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Senior care organizations were some of the hardest hit by COVID-19 infections and deaths early in the pandemic, both for those receiving care as well as staff; 22% of COVID-19-related deaths through March, April, and May of 2020 occurred in the senior care facility population. Professionals in senior care are an important population to understand as they have had to navigate a constantly changing work environment, increasing workloads, less support to safely and effectively conduct their work, and an ever-evolving communication environment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven professionals employed by a variety of senior care organizations across the United States. Inductive thematic analysis revealed four themes related to perceptions of organizational functioning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The themes indicate that similar issues were encountered by professionals working in senior care, however, job type impacted the perceptions of those issues. Structuration theory is applied to the findings to explain how structure and agency are created and reinforced in the social systems of senior care organizations.