TABLE 6.

Direct quotes on lessons learned, from a study on communication in nursing homes during COVID-19, Bellinzona, Switzerland. 2020.

ID	Direct quotes	Source a
L1	Perhaps it wouldn't have been a bad idea to have someone within the team exclusively handling video calls, you know. (…) So that you, as the primary caregiver, wouldn't be taken away from the unit. That would have been a good thing. Like now, we have visits in the garden, and what do they do? They call us, we have to bring the elderly person down, then they call us again, and we have to bring them up, and this disrupts our routine. We would need someone specifically assigned to this task. I don't know, a rotating activity coordinator, a rotating volunteer who takes care of this, so that you can always focus on your unit work. That would have been interesting	Nurse, female, more 10
L2	Exactly, maybe getting someone from the army or civil defense involved, this person could provide support for these visit matters. Even volunteers and such. You could make them available and see if such an arrangement could be implemented, so as not to burden the staff	Family member, female, under 65
L3	Well … it could have been done, it could … it could still be done, perhaps further increasing the use of video calls. But on a technical level, I don’t know how to do it either, you know. Creating more autonomy for the residents to give them the opportunity to talk, but these are things that perhaps should have been considered earlier. Thinking about a little device that each resident could have in their room to contact their family and vice versa at any time, instead of depending on these scheduled appointments, on these things, you know	Nurse, male, more 10
L4	Exactly, there’s room for improvement in things. Even in communication. Maybe instead of having just one tablet, have one tablet for each floor, or two tablets for each floor	Family member, female, under 65

^a Source column is organized as follows: role, gender (m male, f female), age (for family member) or years of experience (for healthcare professional).