GPs and NPs in aged care

Practising in aged care

Improving primary health care for all Australians, especially older people, has been an important goal in health and aged care reforms.

The Department of Health and Aged Care has introduced several programs that can help GPs provide high-quality and sustainable care in aged care settings. These initiatives aim to ensure that older Australians receive the support they need to maintain their health and wellbeing.

• The General Practice in Aged Care Initiative promotes continuous quality care for people living in residential aged care.
• The National Scope of Practice Review is an independent scope of practice review.
• Bulk Billing Incentive Payments provides information on increases that have been made to bulk billing incentive payments for a range of MBS consultation items.
• The GP and Practices Information Kit provides information about delivering the incentive, including the requirements and information on primary care in residential aged care homes.

Developing my skills

As part of continuing professional development, it is important to identify the knowledge and skills/competencies required to provide quality care as health care professionals. The following resources can help you build knowledge, skills and confidence in palliative care for older people.

Clinical skills

• The RACGP aged care clinical guide (Silver Book) is available online to support clinical care provided by GPs to older people.
• The CareSearch GP Hub and palliAGED page for GPs contain resources that will assist you in assessing patients, symptom management, and clinical decision making.
• The ELDAC Primary Care Toolkit is designed to help people who work in primary care to support palliative care provision and advance care planning.
• caring@home provides resources and online training modules for health care professionals to teach families and carers how to manage symptoms at the end of life.
• The ELDAC Managing Risk Toolkit provides information and guidance on effective governance and risk management for people in residential aged care to support quality aged care on topics such as nutrition and hydration, medication management and transfers.

Tools and resources to support your practice

• The Advance Project^® offers training for GPs and GP nurses on palliative care and end of life care and how resources can be implemented within your general practice service.
• CareSearch provides tools and checklists for GPs to assist in providing palliative care.
• palliAGED has compiled forms for your practice that can be used to support care provision for older patients.
• ELDAC has a list of common clinical assessment and practice tools to guide care planning needs.

End of life law

• The ELDAC End of Life Law Toolkit contains useful resources on common issues that arise in aged care related to advance care planning, voluntary assisted dying, substitute decision-making and managing disputes.
• For further training, the End of Life Law for Clinicians (ELLC) courses are available for medical practitioners, medical students, and nurses to complete on end of life law.

Providing care to diverse populations

• ELDAC provides resources on working with Diverse Population Groups.
• Gwandalan has training and resources available to help you provide palliative care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
• LGBTIQ+ Health Australia has an eLearning module available on providing LGBTIQ+ inclusive palliative care.

Further education and training initiatives

See other Australian Government-funded palliative care education and training focusing on palliative care.