Community Connections
UnCover video: Nurturing the next generation of aged care nurses
For third year Bachelor of Nursing student Emi Callaway, the opportunity to reflect with her peers and mentors was a pivotal part of the Clinical Placements with Older People (CPOP) program.
“I’m passionate about advocating and caring for older people. When my Clinical Liaison Nurse introduced the CPOP workbook during the first week of placement, I saw it as a great opportunity to structure my learning and reflect more deeply,” Emi says.
The University of Canberra in collaboration with Curtin University, Edith Cowan University and the University of Wollongong, developed CPOP to boost the capacity of Australia’s professional nursing workforce to care for older people. With high demand for nurses across all aspects of the healthcare sector, offering students a challenging and rewarding experience in an aged care setting was the driving force behind the new program, led by UC’s Professor of Gerontological Nursing, Dr Kasia Bail.
“Sometimes our students are really focused on what’s happening in hospitals, but nursing happens in lots of different places,” Kasia says.
“Older people are everywhere, and gerontological nursing requires a complex skillset. We need our nursing students to see more of these skills in action, so they are better able to provide this kind of care.”
For students like Emi, who were already drawn to aged care nursing as a specialty, the CPOP experience demonstrated the importance of leadership and delegation in a registered nurse (RN) role. The participating students saw these qualities firsthand at Jindalee Aged Care, in the Canberra suburb of Narrabundah.
“RNs working in residential aged care are required to have a diverse range of skillsets for the numerous roles they play,” Emi says.
“As doctors are rarely on site, I worked alongside RNs who had to lead care and delegate tasks to lifestyle coordinators, assistants in nursing, and physiotherapy aides.
“Their leadership qualities were critical to providing safe, quality care to the residents.”
Fellow third-year Bachelor of Nursing student Marcus Goh came to the CPOP program after a placement with older people in a hospital setting.
“In the hospital, we were allocated different patients for each shift, but here we get to build a rapport with the residents who we see every day, which has really widened my experience,” Marcus says.
“Most days we meet with our clinical facilitator to chat about what we have been doing throughout the week, which helps us in learning more about the residents.”
The experience has cemented Marcus’ desire to pursue gerontological nursing, as working in aged care is something close to his heart.
“Growing up in Malaysia I spent ten years as a carer for my grandfather before leaving home to go to college, and occasionally I return to Malaysia to do that,” he says.
“It’s something that has had a big influence on my chosen career path.”
Eliza Stewart is a clinical facilitator also known at UC as a Clinical Liaison Nurse tasked with supporting students during the CPOP program and guiding the Registered Nurses on site to mentor the students.
“I feel exceptionally privileged to be a part of this program. It's driving a growing area of nursing, where it’s important for students to understand the complexity of care and depth of knowledge that nurses in residential aged care or geriatric wards require,” Eliza says.
The students benefit from a holistic understanding of the ageing process: physiologically, emotionally and psychologically. Eliza also echoes the students’ views on the benefits of the CPOP reflective workbooks – not only the students themselves, but in evaluating the efficacy of the program as well.
“These workbooks are helping students build their diverse range of knowledge and skills, as well as providing research data and can also help with additional funding” she says.
Eliza says witnessing the transformation of the students over the course of their placements is one of the most rewarding aspects of her role.
“Students can be quite nervous at the start, perhaps because they’re not really sure what to expect, or because they haven’t had a great deal to do with the older generation.
“It’s really nice to see them develop that confidence – they leave the program with a whole new appreciation of what it means to be an aged care nurse, and they build lovely therapeutic relationships with both the RNs and the residents.”
Anita Paudel has been working closely with students in the CPOP program. She has been with Jindalee for three years as a registered nurse, followed by almost one year as a clinical care manager. She knows firsthand about the need for highly skilled nurses in the sector.
“It’s not only about wound care, care plan review, and working with the residents’ families, it’s also about complex care, which could involve inserting catheters, responding to epileptic seizures, stoma care and delivering palliative care for residents who have entered a terminal phase.
“A big part of the student experience is being able to do all these things under the supervision of an RN.
“I used to get a lot of students saying they wanted to start their careers working in a hospital but through participating in the CPOP program, they have changed their perspective and are open to working as a nurse in an aged care setting, which is wonderful to hear!”
It’s the people who have shaped those new perspectives – as Jindalee resident Gina Casey says, “We’re real people with a history.” She has been living in the residential aged care village for three years and having had a health background herself, she enjoys having the students around.
“I encourage them to ask me questions and use me as a sounding board if they need it,” she says.
“Interacting with them so they stay fresh and engaged in the industry, as opposed to just being left on their own, is a really important part of this process.”
A supportive experience is vital for the success of the CPOP program to achieve its mission of building a nursing workforce to care for older people.
“As people get older, they have been themselves for longer, so their choices and preferences and ways of living need to be supported as they may develop complex or chronic illnesses,” Kasia says.
“Nurses have the skills and knowledge about those different kinds of complex comorbidities: dementia, delirium, cancers ... that’s what our nursing students need to be learning and to be ready to provide.”
Words by Emma Larouche, photos and video by Liam Budge.