Mrs Joane Sinio1, Mrs Sophie Legge1
1Uniting Agewell, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Joane Sinio is a Nurse Educator at Uniting AgeWell, specialising in education and leading IPC workforce initiatives, with 18 years’ experience in aged care settings. Sophie Legge, Chief Quality and Customer Experience Officer, brings 35 years’ experience in quality and risk management, strengthening governance across acute, rural, and residential settings.
Abstract:
Problem
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted gaps in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) leadership in aged care. Increasing regulatory expectations, ongoing outbreak risk, and variation in IPC capability reinforced the need for structured, practical, and sustainable workforce development.
What was done
An annual IPC Lead Study Day was implemented to build capability, strengthen peer learning, and promote consistency in IPC practice across services. Three years of post-event survey data, participant feedback, and longitudinal Aged Care National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (AC NAPS) results across 20–21 residential aged care facilities were analysed to iteratively refine the program and assess antimicrobial stewardship outcomes over time.
Results
Participant feedback consistently demonstrated high satisfaction and engagement, informing ongoing refinements to content, facilitation, and learning design. Enhancements included increased use of external experts, multidisciplinary perspectives, and interactive, scenario-based learning aligned with clinical practice. Over the same period, AC NAPS data corresponded with these workforce capability improvements, demonstrating enhanced antimicrobial stewardship, with prescribing decreasing from 23% in 2023 to 15% in 2025 despite population growth.
Conclusions
The IPC Lead Study Day is an effective and scalable workforce development strategy that strengthens IPC leadership capability, multidisciplinary collaboration, and practice consistency in aged care. This model is likely transferable to other aged care providers seeking sustainable approaches to workforce capability development.
Lessons learnt
Key lessons included the value of interactive learning, multidisciplinary input, and ongoing program refinement to maintain relevance across diverse services. Longitudinal data review was critical in demonstrating measurable improvements in clinical outcomes over time.