Allied Health Professionals in Aged Care

I am starting in aged care

• The Equip Aged Care Learning Modules cover a range of topics including the Australian Aged Care System, the role of nurses, and the Aged Care Quality Standards.
• The ELDAC Allied Health Toolkit has a section on practising in aged care.
• The ELDAC Primary Care Toolkit and Residential Aged Care Toolkit provide an overview of how palliative care and end of life care is delivered across different care settings.
• Funding and Rebates in the ELDAC Allied Health Toolkit provides an overview of the various funding models that can be proposed to fund allied health input in residential and home-based aged care.
• The ELDAC Allied Health Checklist is a tool to use with older adults to identify ‘how they are going’ and the need for allied health services.
• The Allied Health toolkit Guidance and Research page offers a search function and links to practice ready evidence summaries to guide best practice in aged care and palliative care or support further study in this area.

Developing my skills

As part of continuing professional development, it is important to identify the knowledge and skills/competencies required to provide quality care as health care professionals. Your knowledge and learning needs may be different depending on your respective scope of practice, level of expertise, and experience. Planning to meet your professional learning needs and knowing what educational resources are available will assist you in upskilling in palliative care and advance care planning. 

Assess your learning needs

• Use the ELDAC Personal Learning Assessment form (658kb pdf) to rate your own knowledge, skills and confidence in palliative care and advance care planning and create a learning plan (774kb pdf).

Communication

• The ELDAC Allied Health Toolkit has tips and conversation starters for managing difficult conversations, as well as links to further training for supporting end of life conversations.

End of life law

• The ELDAC End of Life Law Toolkit contains useful resources on common issues that arise in aged care related to advance care planning, voluntary assisted dying, substitute decision-making and managing disputes.
• The toolkit also includes a factsheet on Voluntary assisted dying in aged care: Roles and obligations of allied health professionals (190kb pdf).

Providing care to diverse populations

• ELDAC provides resources on working with Diverse Population Groups.
• Gwandalan has training and resources available to help you provide palliative care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
• LGBTIQ+ Health Australia has an eLearning module available on providing LGBTIQ+ inclusive palliative care.

Education

• palliAGED provides links to online learning courses relevant to allied health professionals.
• PalliBytes has a learning pathway designed for allied health professionals.
• The PaCE Aged Care directory helps you find learning and teaching resources to support the development of specific palliative care capabilities. 
• The CareSearch Allied Health hub contains practical resources relevant to allied health professions for palliative care across the lifespan.