A collaboration on aged care nurse education between NSW regional aged care provider Clarence Village and Southern Cross University (SCU) is aiming to dispel common misconceptions about aged care as a nursing speciality – with positive results.
The Aged Care Classroom project sees real-life case studies presented by Clarence Village to take nursing students through challenging situations faced by Registered Nurses in aged care.
Pre- and post-workshop surveys are used to identify student perceptions of aged care and whether they were considering a career in the industry.
“While it’s still early days, the results from the Aged Care Classroom workshops have been super encouraging – the number of students considering a career in aged care before and after the first round of workshops went from 7 to 41,” said Clarence Village CEO, Duncan McKimm.
“It just goes to show how effective showing students what aged care nursing actually involves is.”
Aged care to be 17,500 FTE nurses short in 12 years
Duncan and Donna Wilson, a Nursing Lecturer in the Faculty of Health at SCU, presented the preliminary findings on behalf of the project at the recent NET/NEP Nurse Education Conference in Singapore on 29-31 October.
Duncan says the conference, which hosted over 600 delegates from around the world, highlighted the need for a local solution to sourcing nurses with many countries reporting major shortages.
The Federal Government’s own data suggests that Australia’s aged care sector will be short 17,500 Full-Time Equivalent nurses by 2035.
“We know there won’t be enough nurses to meet demand in Australia for the next ten years at least – we have to ensure we’re putting the industry front and centre in the minds of students,” he said.
“We have to try everything we can to be competitive with the nurses that we have.”
The team will now publish a scoping review on the project next year – and are keen for other providers to follow their lead.
Find out more about the Aged Care Classroom and contact Duncan and the team here.