It takes a team: Building holistic care in aged care

At every stage of life, looking after your health and wellbeing is essential – and in later years, it becomes especially important. As our bodies and lifestyles change, so too do our needs.

While residential aged care providers deliver 24 hour care and support and are encouraged to provide seamless, holistic care, we are not standalone health care systems like a hospital. We operate within a broader ecosystem, straddling delivery of primary and acute care. When that ecosystem works well, people’s needs can be proactively managed so they thrive. When there are gaps — whether in dental, specialist mental health, or other niche services — problems can evolve and can reduce quality of life.

For older people living in residential aged care, it can be difficult, time-consuming and anxiety-inducing to have to seek out basic primary health services. Travelling to the dentist, optometrist, podiatrist, or GP can become a hassle involving specialised transport or requiring family members to take time off work.

To ease this burden, Resthaven is working with service providers to offer health services like these within our residential aged care homes. However, not every essential service provider is able or willing to come on-site.

Take oral health, for example.

In-home emergency dental care is only available for particular dental emergencies, such as a newly discovered suspected pathology or significant swelling that is impacting the ability to eat or swallow, and it is impractical for the person to leave the home. But preventative dental care — the kind that is proactive and promotes greater wellbeing and avoids a dental emergency — is much harder to coordinate. Resthaven nurses and care teams assist with daily mouth care, but we cannot provide clinical dental treatment without dentists.

The encouraging news is that we have seen what good integration looks like with other service providers.

Across Resthaven homes, we provide specialist nursing support for continence, mental health and dementia, palliative care and wounds, and we have developed strong partnerships with allied health professionals such as podiatrists, dietitians, doctors, speech pathologists, optometrists and mobile x-ray operators to deliver on site care.

Assessment and care provided to residents in their home demonstrates what is possible when clinical expertise aligns with person centered best practice and aged care environments. Our new focus will be to identify and work with dental health providers to expand the services we can offer to our residents at home.

The common thread in successful partnerships is not just clinical competence — it is shared values. The most effective partners we have understand that aged care is about offering care first and foremost. It is about dignity. It is about optimising and focusing on quality of life in later years. It is about prevention, not just crisis response.

This is why Resthaven is strengthening our partnerships to create an environment where older people are advocated for to receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time — supporting not only better health outcomes, but a life lived with dignity, comfort and confidence.

Opinion piece by Merridy Baylis,
Executive Manager Clinical Governance and Operational Excellence