Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a particularly severe impact on nursing homes, exposing numerous pre-existing deficiencies in end-of-life care.
Aim: To describe how the COVID-19 pandemic affected nursing home and primary care professionals' attempts to achieve the objectives of a pre-existing end-of-life programme and to explore their personal experiences of end-of-life care in these facilities.
Design: A qualitative descriptive study using thematic analysis.
Setting/participants: Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted from March to November 2020 with professionals from nursing homes and primary care facilities who participated in the development of the NUHELP programme.
Results: Six main themes were identified: (1) Comprehensive assessments of residents at the homes were not conducted due to excessive workload and high staff turnover. (2) New technologies and changes to professional roles were used to meet relatives' needs for information. Residents only received information when they requested it. (3) Advance care planning was not carried out and was limited to potential hospital transfer. (4) Arrangements were made to allow relatives to spend time with residents during their final moments, but complicated grief among relatives and professionals is anticipated. (5) Management of complexity varied depending on the degree of coordination with primary care facilities. (6) Nursing home professionals felt abandoned, with a lack of human resources, equipment and training.
Conclusions: The pandemic cast light on existing shortcomings in nursing homes in terms of comprehensive assessments, communication, decision making, grief management and palliative care complexity. Nursing homes need more human, material and training resources, as well as improved coordination with the public healthcare system.
Keywords: COVID-19; Palliative care; nursing homes; primary health care.