workforce
Victoria Traynor
(left) with fellow
researcher
Nicole Britten.
Photo: UOW
Boost your skills
“Using this framework will contribute to
the delivery of high quality, person-centred
care by enabling staff to know what
aspects of aged care are the most valuable
and the standards they are expected to
reach in their individual practice.”
Aged Care Insite spoke with Traynor to
unpack the new competencies.
New gerontology framework
offers nurses new skills.
Victoria Traynor interviewed
by Conor Burke
I
n the wake of the royal commission
and a perceived skills shortage in the
sector, the University of Wollongong, in
partnership with the Illawarra Health and
Medical Research Institute, has released
the Gerontological Nursing Competencies
(GNCs) framework.
The framework provides an evidence-
based pathway that allows nurses to develop
specialist skills.
A study of the framework has found that
the program produced nurses who were
more confident and skilled.
This research was led by Professor
Victoria Traynor of the UOW School of
Nursing, who saw a problem with the
makeup of the current workforce: while
the number of support staff has risen, the
number of registered nurses has stayed the
same, leading to a skills shortage.
“A competency framework says if you’re
working in aged care as a registered
nurse, you should be competent in these
areas. It would give the public reassurance
that the aged care industry is going to
deliver services of a similar high standard,”
Traynor said.
32 agedcareinsite.com.au
ACI: What skills are you currently seeing
that aged care nurses are missing?
VT: We have identified 11 core
competencies, and we believe that those
11 areas are where nurses should focus
their attention, and focus their efforts in
terms of their practice and their continuing
professional development.
The centre competency is about living
well across communities and groups. At the
centre of the practice for registered nurses
working with older people, we believe
that we should all be working towards
promoting wellbeing for older people
regardless of the community where they live
and the specific group that they’re a part of.
Then the other 10 areas of
competencies, some are specific
about clinical care. For example, pain
management. Some are about palliative
care in the end stages of a person’s life
and dementia care. Other aspects of the
care are more about lifestyle. For example,
transitioning between living in your own
home to perhaps a retirement village
through to a nursing home.
There is also a focus on contemporary
issues. For example, enabling access to
technology. We believe that technology is
an important aspect of everyone’s lives, not
just people who are under 65.
The last 10 areas are promoting mental
health and psychological wellbeing and
communicating effectively with older
people. We also make sure that there’s
a focus on partnering with family carers
and this has become particularly pertinent
from the royal commission hearings
where family carers are describing being
excluded from the lives of the older
person, particularly when they go into a
nursing home to live. The eleventh core
competency is about legal and ethical
frameworks. Again, we can see how
relevant that is after the hearings for the
royal commission.
This project was in the works prior to
the Four Corners program and the royal
commission. Did you already see a need
for improvement in aged care?
Yes. Our team has been working on
competency frameworks for a number of
years. Fifteen to 20 years, in fact. Prior to
the gerontological nursing competency,
we developed dementia care competency
and we’ve just kept progressing that work.
About three years ago, we were
invited by a collaborative of aged care
organisations to develop this particular
framework. All the organisations who are
part of the collaborative, and ourselves
and colleagues from University of NSW,
we anticipated and hoped this framework
would be providing some clear guidelines
and guidance for aged care organisations.
But now with the royal commission,
we’re really pleased that we’ve developed
this work, and we’re working towards
making sure it’s at the forefront of
decisions about how aged care is delivered
in the future.
You were overseeing, then, the end
stages of your work when the royal