Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program: Final Evaluation Report
11.2 - Awareness, impact and effectiveness of EBPRAC program
- Key Messages
- Executive Summary
- About This Report
1 - Introduction- 2 - Evidence, Changes in Practice and the EBPRAC Program
- 3 - Program Delivery/Implementation
- 4 - Program Impact
- 5 - Capacity Building
- 6 - Generalisability
- 7 - Sustainability
- 8 - Dissemination
- 9 - Appropriateness
- 10 - Cost Implications for Government and Aged Care Providers
11 - Perceptions of High-Level Stakeholders- 12 - Discussion and Conclusions
- 13 - Recommendations
- References
- Appendices 1 to 6
- Appendices 7 to 12
- Appendices 13 to 17
Participants were asked about their awareness of the EBPRAC program, and impressions of its impact and effectiveness. The overwhelming response was that there was limited or no awareness amongst those who had not been directly involved in the program. Some indicated that the first they had heard of it was when approached to participate in the interview. Others commented that the extent of their knowledge of the program was through their attendance at one of the Better Practice seminars conducted by the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency.
For those who had been involved in the program the feedback was generally positive. One respondent noted they were ‘excited to be involved’, while another noted that it was ‘great’ to have been part of a program that had a ‘quality improvement ... framework’ and enabled aged care staff ‘to think and reflect on their practice’. Yet another highlighted the importance of the program in terms of its capacity building, as ‘aged care doesn’t have a well educated workforce’ and the projects’ facilitated direct access to expert advice, support and resources by staff working in such environments.
One respondent who had been involved in an EBPRAC project noted that despite their initial evaluation suggesting that it had ‘not achieved many tangible outcomes’, a subsequent discussion with the organisation several months after the completion of the project revealed that significant change had indeed occurred and was embedded within organisational practices and procedures. It is possible that the two-year time-frame of the projects was not long enough to really test out the extent to which the changes they had introduced were embedded and sustainable.
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