Aged Care
Skills ‘inadequate’ for sub-acute patients
NSWNMA member Mary Gibbs, when giving evidence to an NSW Upper House inquiry, underlined the need to raise skill levels in aged care.
RN Mary Gibbs has worked in both private and public hospitals and in for-profit and non-profit aged care. She has held senior leadership roles in the last 20 years.
She recently gave evidence to an NSW Upper House inquiry into whether RNs should be on duty in nursing homes at all times.
Mary said regulations covering the aged care sector are insufficient to help staff provide the fundamental care needed.
“My colleagues and I have always felt that aged care here is the second cousin to the health industry,” she said.
She told the inquiry that the workforce generally lacks the skills required by modern aged care facilities.
“Aged care facilities are now all sub-acute units – extensions of sub-acute units from the hospitals with the complexity of the residents that are coming out of those facilities.
“We are getting early discharges and complex care. We are getting residents with behavioural and mental health issues.
“The junior workforce is not skilled to manage that. It is solely reliant on an RN’s ability to do clinical assessments and work with the general practitioners in the community.”
Mary said the current work-force skill mix includes aged care workers with only three to six months’ experience.
“That experience is basically ticking the boxes and doing 120 hours of clinical practice wherever they have been sent.
“They do not understand the concept of aged care and gerontology. They do not understand (dementia). They do not understand the behaviour management strategies that they have to put in place.”
She said some in the aged care workforce see aged care as a stepping stone to other career paths.
Mary told the inquiry that aged care needs to be treated as a part of and similar to the health system and be given “the resources that they have in the hospital system, particularly if we are expected to take sub-acute residents”.
‘Aged care facilities are now all sub-acute units – extensions of sub-acute units from the hospitals with the complexity of the residents that are coming out of those facilities’ — Mary Gibbs