Aged Care Online

Find an aged care home for you!
Call My Care Path on 1300 197 230

Raising the bar on continuum of care

on Monday, July 7, 2014

A Victorian aged care provider has developed a workforce model to avoid unnecessary hospital transfers.

Piloted with Catholic Homes in 2013 after receiving funding from Health Workforce Australia, the Raise the Bar program gives care staff the training and tools to better manage stable residents with acute care needs, including those entering the end-of-life phase.

Catholic Homes learning and development manager Jane Williams said the main case for change was established during an initial gap analysis, which identified the general reluctance of the elderly to communicate physical pain.

Raise the Bar then developed Stop and Watch, an early warning tool that uses plain language to empower volunteers, personal care attendants and kitchen staff alike to identify and document a resident’s declining health.

 “A doctor might see the residents irregularly, at best,” Ms Williams said.

“But the people who spend the most time with them notice different things. For kitchen staff it might be their eating habits and for maintenance staff it may be their movements.”

Following a clinical assessment undertaken at the facility, a resident flagged as unwell may require a hospital transfer.

Raise the Bar has a set of emergency guidelines in place to support clinical staff in their decision-making, so when they call a hospital, GP or ambulance, they can confidently advise on the best clinical approach.

If a resident is identified as unwell early on, they may be more suitable for treatment at the facility, avoiding the upheaval of a hospital admission.

Raise the Bar administers additional training for nurses to increase the type and level of clinical care that can be provided at the facility.

The program has also established an imprest medication system that allows nurses immediate access to prescription drugs, predominately antibiotic therapies and end-of-life pain relievers, like morphine.

Ms Williams said the Raise the Bar trial has been an empowering process that has not only improved the interface between residential and acute care, but enhanced job satisfaction within aged care.

“Nurses have been saying they feel like nurses,” she said.

For the resident, it gives greater choice on where and how they recieve care.

Raise the Bar has been trialled in three Catholic Homes facilities and is now in the process of a broader rollout to the organisation's six remaining homes.

Image: The Stop and Watch guidelines are distributed to all members of the facility. CONTRIBUTED.

Banner