Home > For Health Professionals > Aged care > Residential Care > Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care Initiative

Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care Initiative

Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care

The Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care (EBPRAC) program commenced in 2007 with the aim of identifying and developing sustainable strategies to encourage residential aged care facilities to implement existing evidence-based best practice guidelines. EBPRAC supported the uptake of evidence-based guidelines by funding organisations to translate the best available evidence into effective approaches for staff to use in their everyday practice.

To date, there have been two EBPRAC funding rounds involving 13 projects. Five projects were funded under Round 1 and commenced in December 2007 and concluded in December 2009. Eight projects were funded under Round 2 and commenced in December 2008 and concluded in December 2010.

Round 1 and Round 2 involved 111 residential aged care facilities in 108 locations across the six states in Australia. Projects consisted of a lead organisation working with a group of facilities to implement evidence in one of nine areas of clinical practice – pain management, falls prevention, ‘as required’ (PRN) medications, oral health, nutrition and hydration, behaviour management, palliative care, wound management and infection control. A wide range of strategies were used to implement evidence-based practice with a strong focus on education, use of local facilitators, feedback of data to staff and provision of resources. Lead organisations included five universities, three research centres, three divisions of general practice and two service providers.

In recognition of the importance of further developing evidence-based clinical practice across the aged care sector, the Australian Government expanded the scope of the Program to include community aged care in the 2010-11 Federal Budget. With this expansion, the name of the program changed from the EBPRAC program to the Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care (EBPAC) initiative.

The EBPAC initiative aims to encourage and support the uptake of evidence-based, person-centred, better practice in Australian Government subsidised aged care services, through a focus on improving staff knowledge and skills and developing supporting resources, to improve outcomes for aged care recipients.

A third Round of funding of the EBPAC initiative is planned for the second half of 2011 and will include community aged care.

Evaluation of EBPRAC

The Centre for Health Service Development (CHSD), University of Wollongong, undertook a four year evaluation of Round 1 and Round 2 of the EBPRAC program. The Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report provides information on the outcome of the 13 projects, highlights enablers and barriers to the uptake of evidence-based practice in residential aged care, and makes a number of recommendations regarding future activities to support sector wide improvements in this area. The design of the evaluation was informed by a review of the literature and focused on six key issues – program delivery, program impact, sustainability, capacity building, generalisability and dissemination.

This report is available in HTML format:
Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report

You may download this document in PDF format:
PDF printable version of the Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care Program Final Evaluation Report (PDF 798 KB)

If you are unable to download the PDF file please send an email to: ebpac@health.gov.au for a copy to be sent to you.
Top of page