Background: Nurses and nursing students experienced an emotional burden while working during the COVID-19 outbreak. During the COVID-19 outbreak three questions for nurses working under these extreme circumstances were formulated: 1. What today’s events do you remember? 2. How do you feel (physically and mentally)? 3. Do you have enough support? The purpose of this study was to obtain insight into whether nurses and nursing students perceive that the use of the three-questions-method contributes to effective coping with the emotional burden during the COVID-19 outbreak. Methods: Focus group interviews were held with hospital nurses (n = 11) and nursing students with internships in mental health care (n = 2), hospital (n = 9), and homecare/nursing home care (n = 3) in September 2020 followed by twenty semi-structured interviews one year later. Results: Almost all nurses and nursing students named factors that contributed to the emotional burden: fear, powerlessness, frustration, lack of knowledge about COVID-19, and pressure to pass the internship. Participants indicated that using the three-questions-method can help to effectively cope with the emotional burden during and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Conclusions: Using the three-questions-method offers added value in coping with emotional burden and can be used in education as well as in practice.
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The transition from home to a nursing home can be stressful and traumatic for both older persons and informal caregivers and is often associated with negative outcomes. Additionally, transitional care interventions often lack a comprehensive approach, possibly leading to fragmented care. To avoid this fragmentation and to optimize transitional care, a comprehensive and theory-based model is fundamental. It should include the needs of both older persons and informal caregivers. Therefore, this study, conducted within the European TRANS-SENIOR research consortium, proposes a model to optimize the transition from home to a nursing home, based on the experiences of older persons and informal caregivers. These experiences were captured by conducting a literature review with relevant literature retrieved from the databases CINAHL and PubMed. Studies were included if older persons and/or informal caregivers identified the experiences, needs, barriers, or facilitators during the transition from home to a nursing home. Subsequently, the data extracted from the included studies were mapped to the different stages of transition (pre-transition, mid-transition, and post-transition), creating the TRANSCITmodel. Finally, results were discussed with an expert panel, leading to a final proposed TRANSCIT model. The TRANSCIT model identified that older people and informal caregivers expressed an overall need for partnership during the transition from home to a nursing home. Moreover, it identified 4 key components throughout the transition trajectory (ie, pre-, mid-, and post-transition): (1) support, (2) communication, (3) information, and (4) time. The TRANSCIT model could advise policy makers, practitioners, and researchers on the development and evaluation of (future) transitional care interventions. It can be a guideline reckoning the needs of older people and their informal caregivers, emphasizing the need for a partnership, consequently reducing fragmentation in transitional care and optimizing the transition from home to a nursing home.
