palliAGED News

Online teaching resources provide a flexible way for aged care staff to learn. palliAGED makes it easy for you to access a range of courses and now there are even more! Visit the Training and Education section to find your next learning experience.

Newly added:
 

Technology is seen as having a potentially transformative effect on aged care. New technologies can connect care and service providers, offer new ways of providing direct care and of doing business.

Case conferences make sure everyone is on the same page about care needs and care plans. Having a structure and document templates to record the decisions makes communicating and sharing easier. palliAGED has always had a set of freely available Case Conference forms. If you sometimes have longer case notes and need to print these for your files, the following forms are now available in Word for this application:

• Staff Communication Form (32kb docx)
• Case Conference Summary - residential care (50kb docx)
• Case Conference Summary - home care (50kb docx)

Workforce capability: In the latest Australian Ageing Agenda print magazine, we discuss support for nurses responding to expectations for care at the end-of-life as outlined in the new draft standards for aged care. Visit Australian Ageing Agenda to read more.

Using complaints to improve aged care: In the latest Aged Care Insite we discuss the importance of viewing complaints as an opportunity to improve service delivery and examine some of the support available to help with this.

Our In Focus article series puts an evidence and community lens on today's pressing palliative care and aged care issues, as well as highlighting our role and resources that can support the sector.

In the first of a new series, we look at considerations and resources to address how we can support aged care’s workforce capability.

The new palliAGED resource packs include a range of forms and checklists useful as part of practice and for training together with the palliAGED Practice Tips and Introductory modules. There are separate packs for home care and residential aged care. Both packs can now be downloaded from palliAGED. Printed packs can be ordered using the palliAGED order form.

To explore the new resources, go to the Cognitive Impairment and Dementia pages in the palliAGED Evidence Centre and Practice Centre.

Palliative care of older people includes assessing and responding to cognitive issues such as confusion, delirium, dementia and/or communication difficulties. Dementia is likely the better-known. Cognitive Impairment and Dementia is the latest topic in the palliAGED Evidence Centre to be substantially updated and expanded this year.

Extensively researched, these pages draw from the latest evidence and evidence synthesis to support the aged care workforce. The companion Practice Centre pages offer assessment, screening tools, information for families and carers, training modules and other resources to improve your practice and your organisation’s practice.

Almost two thirds of adults over 80 years of age have three or more chronic diseases. Comorbidity and multimorbidity are common terms to describe this but have you ever wondered what the difference is between them? This topic in palliAGED’s Evidence Centre has now been substantially updated and expanded to explain this and the impact of multiple chronic conditions on care at the end of life. It provides wide-ranging and extensively researched evidence summaries to guide aged care practice in this area. The Practice Centre pages also provide practical resources and tools that staff can use to support older people in their care.

The 2nd editions of the palliAGED Practice Tips Sheets for nurses and careworkers are now here. Five new topics and new Next Steps pages, as well as new online versions with links to resources and tools, and improved accessibility for tablet and mobile devices, are now available. Read our blogs to learn more. 
You can order printed copies, view or download the booklets and individual sheets for free. Find Practice Tips for Careworkers and practice tips for Practice Tips for Nurses.

At the recent Palliative Care Nurses Australia 2022 conference, Dr. Katrina Erny-Albrecht introduced new palliAGED Practice Tip Sheets for nurses and careworkers, outlining the five new topics added and discussing how active listening and collaboration with the aged care sector has been critical to development of these popular resources. View the presentation slides here (2.88MB pdf).