Tasmania Gains New Aged Care Teaching Facilities
Two of the State’s aged care homes and the University of Tasmania are about to join the growing ranks of state-of-the-art ‘teaching aged care facilities’ being established across Australia.
View by date:
Previous MinistersPDF printable version of Tasmania Gains New Aged Care Teaching Facilities (PDF 17 KB)
5 October 2011
Two of the State’s aged care homes and the University of Tasmania are about to join the growing ranks of state-of-the-art ‘teaching aged care facilities’ being established across Australia.
The University of Tasmania, Masonic Peace Memorial Haven of Northern Tasmania and the Queen Victoria Home are teaming up to operate the teaching aged care homes in Launceston and Hobart, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler announced today.
Speaking at the launch, Mr Butler said the initiative will see the three organisations collaborate on building capacity within residential aged care facilities to provide quality aged care clinical placements for nursing, medical and paramedical students.
The consortium will also build capability within aged care facilities to drive practice-based research and excellence in care provision.
The Gillard Labor Government is providing more than $1.2 million funding for capital and clinical placements to support the initiative.
"The Tasmanian consortium will bring together university facilitators and coordinators to work with aged care facility staff," Mr Butler said.
“They will get special training in mentoring - so they can provide students with high quality clinical training in the aged care environment.
“It’s critical we support the development of a highly educated and skilled workforce and attractive career paths in aged care. Having a skilled workforce is particularly important as the ageing of our population is changing the face of care. Care needs are becoming more complex as people live longer and require care associated with dementia, diabetes and other chronic diseases.”
The Member for Bass, Geoff Lyons joined Mr Butler at the launch and said, “These mentor-based clinical placements will integrate theory and practice and ensure that the future aged care, health and medical workforce is equipped with the skills and knowledge to meet the care needs of Tasmania's growing ageing population."
The success of other existing teaching aged care facilities are outlined in an independent scoping study also being released today. The study shows existing teaching aged care models improve the learning environment for students on clinical placements.
As well as fostering better links between education, research and clinical care and boosting research into practical aged care, the improved training opportunities for all aged care staff could lead to better staff retention.
Mr Butler also announced today that a specific round of funding for the Teaching Research and Aged Care Services program will open this week.
The Government is providing $4 million for grants to support teaching aged care facilities to share best practice across the sector and further develop their teaching models.
For more information, please contact the Minister's Office on (02) 6277 7280
Background: The scoping study is available at the Department of Health and Ageing website
Help with accessing large documents
When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:
- Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
- Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
- Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file
Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking)
may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is
opening and/or lead to system problems.
Help with accessing PDF documents
To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.