Date

4-17-2024

Department

School of Health Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Chair

Cynthia Williams

Keywords

COVID-19, residential care communities (RCCs), infection control practices (ICPs), older adults

Disciplines

Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

Infection control practices (ICPs) are crucial for maintaining the health and safety of residents in a residential care community (RCC). This paper examines the differences in COVID-19 infection rates and cases based on the characteristics of RCCs, such as ICPs, personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, ownership type (for-profit vs. nonprofit), census regions, and RCC size. While ICPs contribute significantly to preventing and controlling the highly contagious virus, a comprehensive program is encouraged to provide a targeted intervention based on RCC’s environmental factors. The importance of the characteristics of the RCCs must be considered in combing with the ICPs to enhance the impact of the infection practices, which will substantially improve the overall success of the infection control and prevention in COVID-19 outcomes. Systems Theory offers the lens for researchers to evaluate, examine, and compare various factors that are associated with the outcome of disease transmission and how those factors are related in certain settings. It facilitates the components such as census region, PPEs, size of the facility, and ownership type (for-profit vs. nonprofit) that are closely linked and provides feedback in a more accurate way to improve the overall success of the process. The study employed ANOVA to test the mean difference between each characteristic, revealing that for-profit and larger organizations tend to have higher infection rates in terms of the ICPs outcomes. However, there were contradictory results concerning other variables for PPE shortages and geographical variations (p>0.05), calling for more diverse explorations regarding the prevalence of ICPs and characteristics of RCCs in the future research.

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