Joseph Ibrahim1
1 Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, Australian Institute for Primary Care and Ageing, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on residential aged care services in Australia and worldwide. We are aware of the vulnerabilities of both the healthcare and aged care systems. There are many lessons from our collective experiences of the suffering of residents, family, and staff through the pandemic.
The core lessons are to have better planning and preparation, be proactive, optimise infection control and prevention, the value of and need for additional staff, the importance of close collaboration between health and aged care services and the value of leadership, including clarity about roles and responsibilities.
There needs to be more than just learning the lessons from the pandemic. Genuine preparation for the future requires implementing strategies to ensure the infrastructure for better policy, procedures and practice.
This presentation will address the aged care system’s past, present and future and the barriers to improving the response to the pandemic.
Biography
Joseph is a medical specialist in aged care with academic appointments at the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University, and Monash University. Joseph completed the first comprehensive national study of injury-related deaths among nursing home residents in the world. It was considered one of the Top 10 influential research studies in 2017 published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Joseph was recognized by the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend’s “People Who Mattered 2019: Health”. Joseph has provided expert testimony to the Commonwealth Senate Inquiry for protecting residents from abuse and poor practices, the House of Representatives Inquiry House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Inquiry and Report on Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence (2021) and Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety including their Special Report into COVID-19 (2020) and Final Report (2021).