workforce
You also found professional growth was occurring through
immersion. Where normally they might just do clinical
placements here, there and everywhere, these nurses are
working in a constant environment.
Better with age
Does aged care experience
make for better nurses?
That’s right. And because aged care is considered a little bit of a
slower pace, which I don’t agree with because there’s a lot going
on in aged care, but in the eyes of a novice nurse, that slower pace
actually gives them a little more time to get to know the nursing
profession. When they interact with other colleagues, they’re not
in a rush to do so.
In an acute care setting, when you talk to a patient, you might
be rushed or it might be considered a waste of time. In aged care,
it’s quite therapeutic for the residents. So, that immersion occurs
in aged care just by spending time with patients or residents,
family and other nursing colleagues.
Cris Algoso interviewed by Conor Burke
You saw also that they learnt how to prioritise patient care.
Why is this specific to aged care work?
R
esearchers at Western Sydney University have found
that nursing undergrads who work in aged care while
completing their studies are learning valuable skills and
enter the profession ahead of their graduate peers.
The researchers surveyed new graduate nurses who were
previously employed as undergraduate assistants in nursing in
an aged care facility and found that they believed aged care
work improved their communication skills, understanding
of the health system as a whole and, importantly, their
time keeping.
“It made me far more comfortable in just communicating with
patients and family,” said one participant.
“It made me confident in my ability to care for patients to some
extent, which relieved any anxiety when starting as an RN,” said
another. “I believed I was one step ahead of many other nurses
who had no prior experience in the field. I was also comfortable
quickly building rapport with patients.”
Lead author Cris Algoso spoke with Aged Care Insite to discuss
why aged care work can produce better nurses.
Being an undergraduate AIN in an aged care facility, they don’t
have that status of a student. That’s important because, again, that
leads to the immersion bit. They’re part of the team and so they
get to know the patients’ needs.
I think a lot of younger nurses don’t realise that older patients
tend to have a lot of comorbidities. Their needs are quite
complex, and being able to get to know these needs allows them
to prioritise what’s more important in terms of that immediate
situation that they might be dealing with.
A lot of the responses to your survey talked about time
management. Why do you think that is?
It was actually quite strange that time management came up. It’s
one of the areas that new graduate nurses struggle with: time
management and prioritising patient needs, especially when
they’ve got their own patient load.
In the aged care setting, they’ve got a lot of things happening all
at once, and so they develop that time management prioritisation
skill. That helps them transition into new graduate RN practice. It
might not necessarily reduce that transition shock per se, but it
prepares them for that transition experience.
They get to know what to expect in terms of having a patient load,
managing what they need to do for different patients or residents.
ACI: You’ve done research into what skills nursing students
learn when they work in aged care homes as nursing assistants,
and how these skills prepare them to graduate as RNs. One of
these skills was communication. Can you elaborate on that? Another response I thought was interesting was when people
wrote: “I never learnt that at uni. I learnt that on the job.” And
that is how they get to understand the structure of a healthcare
organisation.
CA: That was one of the major themes that came up.
Communication is often considered quite a soft skill, but it
underpins a lot of the nursing practice relating to patients. It
was a big part of them understanding the role of a nurse in that
healthcare environment in inpatient care, and what they mean to
a patient in a way.
When you’re starting out, communicating to a stranger
may not be something that’s comfortable. Working in aged
care, novice nurses tend to have a little more time with the
patients or residents than they would if they were in an acute
care setting.
So, they were able to really develop those communication
skills and understand that human side of caring and essentially
patient-centred care because they got to know the patient
very well. That again relates to the whole immersion in the profession. As a
student, they just sort of follow the RN around. They’re prescribed
what to do and they follow that script. But when you’re an AIN in
aged care, you’re part of the team.
You’re getting to know how the healthcare system works in a
way. Even simple things like knowing who to call, whether it’s a
social worker or even something as simple as a wardsman. How
to access that is quite difficult for a new grad to get their head
around, but if you’ve worked in an aged care facility, you become
familiar with the structures.
8
agedcareinsite.com.au
What is unique to aged care that is important to a nurse’s
development that they wouldn’t get elsewhere?
It’s more the humanistic side of nursing that comes out in aged
care a lot, so a lot of patient-centred care. Reading through the