Publication date: Jul 11, 2025
Loneliness is common among nursing home residents, with decreased social connectedness being linked to an increased risk of mortality. During the COVID-19 pandemic, new modalities for family visits, such as videoconferencing, became available in addition to in-person visits, potentially helping to reduce loneliness. This study aimed to characterize family visits among nursing home residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and investigate their associated factors. Data on the visits, including their modalities, were retrospectively collected from facility records for residents of 4 nursing homes over a 3-month period from 2020 to 2022. The types of visits included in-person visits through acrylic boards or windows and video calls. We evaluated the association between resident characteristics and whether they received any visits, regardless of the modality of visit, using a multivariable logistic regression model. The study included 564 participants (mean age, 84. 9 years; female, 70. 0%); among them, 33. 2% were visited, 72. 2% of which had video calls. Participants who used video calls (1. 1 +/- 0. 9 times per month) had significantly higher frequencies of visits than those with in-person visits only (0. 6 +/- 0. 5 times) (p
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Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | COVID-19 pandemic |
| disease | MESH | Loneliness |
| disease | IDO | facility |
| pathway | REACTOME | Reproduction |