Supporting residential aged care through a Community of Practice

Transfers to emergency departments and hospitalizations are common for older people living in residential aged care who experience acute deterioration. This paper shares reflections from 10 years of work across a region in New South Wales, Australia, to develop a new model of care in 141 residential aged care homes. The model successfully reduced emergency department transfers and admissions to hospital. Using an exemplar patient case, the paper describes the Aged Care Emergency Program and associated research outputs. An interprofessional, multiagency Community of Practice supported this work. The authors reflect on the successes and challenges of using a Community of Practice to implement the model of care. We conclude that the Community of Practice, with its iterative evaluation, facilitated change and provided a mechanism for interprofessional practice. Broader systemic change requires clarity in goals of care, shared decision-making, working across sectors, and appropriate resource allocation.