Building Workforce Capacity and Capability in Residential Aged Care

A focused programme of quality improvement can deliver some great results.  I have worked with many residential aged care homes, and I know that empowered staff and good coaching can create exciting changes.

I have used structured programmes such as the NHS Care Homes programme, teaching the fundamentals of quality improvement to staff and allowing them to let their creative solutions drive improvement.

Here’s a couple of examples:

Families of the dementia unit residents told staff that it was distressing to see their loved ones rattling the locked unit doors trying to get out of the unit.  One of the staff had the idea to paint the doors like a library wall and so they got a local artist in.

Result? No more distress, no more rattling plus a beautiful looking door!

Staff were shown data relating to the home’s KPIs and they had stand-up meetings at their performance boards to discuss the data.  At one meeting, a care home worker noticed that two of the graphs were remarkably similar – they were the graph for resident falls and the graph showing staff absences.  Then the penny dropped for staff.  They realised that they know their residents better than agency or bank staff and so if they are off work, resident falls increase.

Result? Absenteeism decreased, falls decreased, and the home saved $1.2M annually in agency costs!