workforce
Myths busted
Why aged care nursing is more
rewarding than you think.
Tracey Silvester interviewed by Megan Tran
I
t’s commonly thought that working as
an aged care nurse comes with certain
stereotypes. While some say it’s the end
of a career, others believe helping people age
is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
Envigor Home Care executive manager
Tracey Silvester told Aged Care Insite the
perception is that, because it’s a choice you
make towards the end of your working life,
it’s not a legitimate career move.
However, she added, given the ageing
population, nurses may need to rethink their
career trajectory.
Silvester also said the belief that working
in aged care means losing valuable nursing
skills is a fallacy, often held by people who
have never worked in the field.
When she recruits aged care nurses,
their clinical skills are as good, if not better,
than nurses working in hospitals, she said,
as they need to be very confident of their
decision-making.
32 agedcareinsite.com.au
Aged cared nurses, Silvester said, need
to have an immense amount of knowledge
across a multitude of areas.
Currently, more than 170,000 people live
in aged care homes, most with one or more
chronic conditions, such as pain, dementia
and depression.
Aged Care Insite spoke with Silvester to
find out more.
ACI: What are some of the stereotypes
associated with aged care nursing?
TS: That it is a choice you make once you’ve
finished the rest of your career, that it isn’t a
legitimate career choice for nurses. And I’d
have to say that given our ageing population,
anybody who thinks they’re going to be able
to work as a nurse and not look after older
people at any point in their career are really
not up with the times in terms of what our
population demographic looks like.
I’ve been working in community and
aged care for the better part of 25 years,
and I remember my first year working in
hospitals – most of the people I was looking
after were older people anyway. So, unless
you make a career choice about working in,
say, paediatrics or midwifery, the reality is,
as a nurse, there isn’t going to be any part
of your career where you aren’t going to be
required to look after older people.
The setting in which you look after the
older person might be a bit different, so
you might have an older person who is
acutely unwell as opposed to working in
community care, where you’re visiting
them in their homes, or in residential aged
care, where you’re working in their homes
but it happens to be an institution. The
reality is, all forms of nursing now, with the
exceptions I mentioned, involve looking
after older people.
What skills do aged care nurses have that
differ to those of other nurses?
I’ve been thinking about this over the last
little while, when I was pondering some of
the discussions that have been happening
about the aged care sector and the model
of care we need for people as they’re
living longer. I don’t think the skills are
very different. You still need to have great
assessment skills, which you need at any
point in your career as a nurse. You still need
to have great clinical skills, because you still
need to be able to provide those clinical
parts of care or nursing to people.
I think the one thing I would say is, you
do need to be able to listen. Now, I’m
not saying that if you’re looking after a
child, or a mother if you’re a midwife, that
you don’t need to be able to listen. But I
think it’s particular communication skills,
acknowledging that older people, perhaps,
don’t have the same capacity to hear things.
They may be cognitively impaired, which
means they might not be able to understand
instructions as well. And often with looking
after older people, you are looking after
their families as well. But again, that can
happen in all areas of nursing.
So, I think it’s a little bit of a misnomer
to say that as a nurse you need to have a
very specific skillset. Although I do believe
that if you are working in different settings
as a nurse, you do need to have a skillset.