Geelong Aged Care, Vic - Education program - awarded 2009
Education program
Geelong Aged Care’s education program has always focused on nurturing and enhancing staff knowledge and skills in order to provide best care practices.
Concomitant to this value is residents’ wellbeing as is clearly evident in Geelong Aged Care’s vision statement:
“Geelong Aged Care will strive to maintain and improve the services they provide by focusing on the holistic needs of the individual resident.”
Therefore, central to the planning phase of Geelong Aged Care’s education program is the resident and a workforce that is reflecting confidence in assessing residents’ needs and delivering best care practices. Hence, the program is always under critique and evolving in order to make available education to the whole workforce. Problematic to the program is ‘shift work’ as Geelong Aged Care provides a 24 hour service seven days a week, so various mediums and learning packages have been developed and implemented.
Alternative methods of providing educational information involve the concepts of understanding, instinct, reflections, questions to guide and knowledge embedded in practice. However, it is one thing to provide the theory, it is more pertinent to assess that learning has been achieved and a willingness to apply newly learnt information if change is recommended. In order to know that the staff understand the educational information, various competency assessments have been developed and continue to evolve.
Assessment tools include quizzes, crosswords, wordfinds and surveys. At present Geelong Aged Care has 82 assessment tools with more than 95% developed by the education team. 2008 saw the development and implementation of crosswords and feedback has been encouraging. A trivia game on dementia is a future goal and a challenge for the team to develop.
A key to learning is having fun whilst participating and full day training programs always have fun activities to maintain engagement and interaction. As reiterated, the resident is central to the education program and therefore residents and families are invited to attend structured training programs. As the educator I have found families have different needs to the staff so therefore in 2008 I included sessions specific for residents and families that were separate to the staff. However, the participants are still welcome to attend staff training and are encouraged to make requests. Families are informed via the newsletters and flyers are in the reception areas of each house.
Staff retention and satisfaction are vital components to Geelong Aged Care and in regards to education this challenge was met with an improved traineeship program in 2008. Geelong Aged Care was presented with the runners up award for the 2008 Minister’s Award for Excellence for Employers of Australian Apprentices.
Notwithstanding this achievement, the traineeship program was critiqued in November 2008 and the new trainees without nursing experience now only work in high care, and are supernumerary for 24 hours a week for a period of eight weeks. A specific program during this time was established, and a preceptor appointed who meets daily with the trainees for between one to two hours. Records of these training sessions and participation is located in the DDON’s office. These changes came about as the previous program (of commencing in low care and then progressing to high care) did not equip the trainees well enough for the needs of those in high care.
Geelong Aged Care’s education program is committed to providing contemporary knowledge, appreciating the skills and abilities of the staff and empowering staff and families in enhancing their perceptions and appreciation of aged care nursing and actions.
