Optimising Health as People Age

Course Overview

This course will strengthen your understanding of how to support healthy ageing and encourage you to further expand the activities you undertake to optimise health as people age.

With an ageing population in Australia, including an ageing general practice workforce, understanding how to optimise health as we age has never been more important. Are you confident in knowing how to support healthy ageing and what needs to be done to carry out a comprehensive health assessment and refer people appropriately?

This interactive module will offer you an opportunity to reflect on your current practice in order to expand your knowledge and skills in supporting people to live and age well in the community.

This education consists of seven modules:

• Section 1: Background
• Section 2: Nurses’ roles in supporting healthy ageing
• Section 3: Assessing common presentations in older people - geriatric syndromes
• Section 4: Medication safety
• Section 5: 75+ health assessment and other important assessments
• Section 6: Individualised care plans and community referral options
• Section 7: Summary

Estimated Duration

1  hour / 1 CPD hour

About the Author

This online education was developed using the written resource: ‘Caring for older people: A learning module for nurses in general practice’ which was developed by the National Ageing Research Institute. Development of this written resource was led by Dr Irene Blackberry with contributions and support provided by a team of people and organisations, listed in the original resource.

The online version of this content was funded by the Department of Health.

This online education was reviewed and updated in 2020.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this education you will be able to:

• describe your role in supporting healthy ageing,
• identify geriatric syndromes and the interventions that can optimise health,
• identify assessments to optimise health in older people including the 75+ health assessment, and
• understand the community options, resources and funding available, and demonstrate your ability to support individualised care planning for older patients.

Target Audience

Suitable for nurses working in primary health care including general practice.

What you’ll get

At the completion of each module you will be presented with a brief online assessment that will test your underpinning knowledge.

To fully complete the course and claim your full CPD hours, we recommend you also complete the corresponding survey at the end. It only takes a few minutes to complete.

Once you have completed all sections of the course, a certificate will be available next to the course name in the ‘My Training’ section of APNA Online Learning.