Seminars in Ageing: Pain management in aged care

Developing a pain management guidelines toolkit for residential aged care

Presenter: Dr Christa Dang and Anabelle Peck, NARI

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About the presentation

The National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) is developing a Pain Management Guidelines (PMG) Toolkit in collaboration with the Australian Pain Society to accompany the second edition of Pain in Residential Aged Care: Management Strategies. To determine what end-users of this Toolkit want in terms of content and structure, thirty-three interviews were conducted with residential aged care (RAC) multidisciplinary staff, residents and their family members, and a co-design workshop was held including 12 participants with clinical or carer experience in aged care and pain management.

 In the first part of the seminar, Dr Christa Dang will summarise and address the views of end-users revealed in the interviews and co-design workshop, proposing methods to deliver a PMG Toolkit that will effectively assist RAC staff in providing optimal pain management care.

While the primary objective of the interviews conducted as part of this research project was to inform the content and the structure of the Toolkit, it became apparent that there are substantial systemic barriers preventing effective pain management in residential aged care. In the second part of the seminar, Anabelle Peck will outline these barriers and discuss strategies implemented in the design of the Toolkit aimed at mitigating the impact of these barriers.

About the presenter

Dr Christa Dang is a Research fellow at the National Ageing Research Institute, working on a variety of projects all centred around quality of care for older people and its impact on their well-being.

Christa completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne, where her thesis was focused on trajectories of cognitive and brain ageing in the presence and absence of Alzheimer's disease neuropathological changes. This work showed that ageing without cognitive decline and minimal brain volume loss is possible; thus, the key question that drives her research is, "How do we make that more probable?"

Anabelle Peck is a Research Assistant in the Clinical Gerontology Division at NARI, where she works across projects exploring aspects of aged care service delivery, and educational interventions for improving pain management in residential aged care. Her research interests include aged care system policy and reform, and person-centred models of care for older people. These interests are supported by her experience working in the aged care sector, and in the area of public policy development.

Further information: [email protected]

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