LibGuides: Aged Care: Aged Care Clinical Reference Tools

Aged Care Clinical Reference Tools

Prompt is your first stop for Clinical Reference Documents at NHW. It is NHW's document management portal for policy, procedures and guidelines and also contains forms, templates, checklists and other documents. Many of the documents simply link to an external guideline that has been adopted for use at NHW. The Prompt database can be searched from the quick links on the NHW intranet homepage. Registration for offsite access is available if you have access to NHW email at home.

Residential Aged Care Prompt documents:

Absconding Missing & Wandering Residents

Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI)

Choice & Decision Making

Clinical Care

Complementary Therapies

Continence Management

Dignity of Risk

Elder Rights Advocacy Service (ERA)

Leave Entitlements Residents

Leisure Interest & Activities

Living Environment

Medication Management

Minimising Restrictive Practices (Restraint)

Mobility and Dexterity

New Admission

Nutrition, Hydration & Meals

Resident Relative Meetings

Resident Security of Tenure

Residents Valuables & Funds

Sensory Loss

SIRS (Serious Incident Response Scheme)

Skin Care

Sleep

Specialised Nursing Care

Use of mobile phones at Illoura - RAC

Verbal Disruption

Waiting List

Wound Care

The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) is NHW's preferred next stop for policy, procedure and guidelines. JBI is one of the world's leading evidence-based practice (EBP) organisations. JBI's evidence-based practice resources assist healthcare professionals to implement an effective evidence-based practice program to provide the best possible patient care.

JBI Manuals for Aged Care:

JBI Evidence-Based Carers Manual for Personal Care Workers employed in residential aged care organisations to provide care to consumers living in one of their homes and is based on Recommended Practices that relate to aged care.
JBI Aged Care Evidence-Based Practice Manual is a comprehensive resource which complements and extends from the JBI Carers Manual. Developed with industry leaders including Nursing Directors, public and private sector experts and safety and quality representatives, this manual includes evidence for advanced care needs.

Key JBI documents for Aged Care:

Influenza outbreaks in aged care facilities : infection prevention and control measures [Offsite Athens Link]
Wandering management [Offsite Athens Link]
Antimicrobial stewardship program: residential aged care [Offsite Athens Link]
Healthcare-associated infection control: hospital management [Offsite Athens Link]
Medication management (residential aged care): Medication review and reconciliation [Offsite Athens Link]
Infection surveillance (older people): residential aged care [Offsite Athens Link]
Basic hand hygiene: health professionals [Offsite Athens Link]
Long-term catheter: management and care [Offsite Athens Link]
Catheter-related urinary tract infections (long term aged care): prevention. [Offsite Athens Link]
Urine sampling: midstream urine specimin [Offsite Athens Link]
Dehydration in older adults: prevention and treatment [Offsite Athens Link]
Dehydration in older adults: assessment and diagnosis [Offsite Athens Link]

| More JBI information |

If, after searching Prompt and JBI, you have still not found what you need, try the following :

A guide for the management and control of gastroenteritis outbreaks in aged care, special care, health care and residential care facilities

This guide has been produced to assist in the management and control of outbreaks of gastroenteritis (gastro) in aged care, special accommodation, hospitals and other residential care facilities such as supported residential services (SRS) and disability group homes. | More Information and Download

First 24 hours – managing COVID-19 in a residential aged care facility

The first 24 hours in managing a confirmed COVID-19 case in a residential aged care facility (RACF) is critical to minimise the spread of the virus and its impact on residents and staff. This checklist is to help residential aged care providers and their staff to manage a COVID-19 positive case or outbreak in the first 24 hours. The steps listed in this document are relevant to the Delta and Omicron variants. Please visit the links within the checklist for more information. | Download

Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines - NHMRC This link opens in a new window
The National Health and Medical Research Council's Guidelines Portal provides a single entry point for access to clinical practice guidelines developed for use in Australian health care settings
Australian Resuscitation Council Guidelines This link opens in a new window
The Australian Resuscitation Council produces Guidelines to meet its objectives in fostering uniformity and simplicity in resuscitation techniques and terminology.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
eTG Complete (Therapeutic Guidelines) This link opens in a new window
Therapeutic Guidelines provide clear, concise, independent and evidence-based recommendations for patient management that have been developed by Australia's leading medical experts.
NSQHS This link opens in a new window
Key functions of the Commission include developing national safety and quality standards, developing clinical care standards to improve the implementation of evidence-based health care, coordinating work in specific areas to improve outcomes for patients, and providing information, publications and resources about safety and quality.

Point of Care Tools are clinical overviews for diagnosis & treatment designed for clinicians to quickly look up information when they are with a patient. They are summaries of evidence from peer reviewed sources and are updated regularly by specialty experts. Some also contain a variety of resources from primary source (eg. Medline) searches to eBooks and eJournals, guidelines, images and videos.

Drug Point of Care resources - Mims, AMH, etc., use the Drug Resources tab at the top of this page.

UpToDate This link opens in a new window
UpToDate is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which clinicians trust to make the right point-of-care decisions. It includes a collection of medical and patient information, access to Lexi-comp drug monographs and drug-to-drug, drug-to-herb and herb-to-herb interactions information, and a number of medical calculators. NOTE: UpToDate Anywhere registration is available to NHW staff by registering from this link when onsite at NHW.

Ovid Clinical Edge This link opens in a new window
Ovid Clinical Edge is a clinical, evidence-based tool that combines content from UpToDate, (Must already be logged into UpToDate.) MEDLINE, and Ovid journals. Quickly access current journal research, evidence–based guidelines, and ebooks with full-text links.

BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
BMJ Best Practice is a easy-to-use decision-support tool that provides authoritative answers to clinical questions. It contains information relating to over 10,000 diagnoses, more than 3,000 diagnostic tests and over 4,000 diagnostic and treatment guidelines. At its core, Best Practice contains the internationally renowned Clinical Evidence. Drug information is provided by Martindale: the Complete Drug Reference. Martindale can be accessed via the Drugs menu or by selecting a drug when viewing a condition or symptom.

ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
ClinicalKey database offers access to medical and surgical books & journals, also medical videos and images.The database also includes drug monographs, clinical guidelines and patient education handouts.

Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making.
Joanna Briggs Institute This link opens in a new window
Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) is one of the world's leading evidence-based practice (EBP) organisations.
JBI's evidence-based practice resources assist healthcare professionals to implement an effective evidence-based practice program to provide the best possible patient care.
Trip Database This link opens in a new window
Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.

Most Primary evidence databases also have filters for a variety of publication types - Reviews, RCTs, Guidelines and so forth.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) database covers the literature of nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, nutrition and dietetics, and other health-related professions.
CINAHL indexes many allied health related journals not covered by MEDLINE and includes citations to books, book chapters, and dissertations. There much overlap of content coverage between MEDLINE and CINAHL, but both databases should be searched to achieve comprehensive retrieval of literature related to a clinical question
Medline (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE is the United States National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database providing information from the following fields: Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Veterinary medicine, Allied health, Pre-clinical sciences. The MEDLINE database is the electronic counterpart of Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and the International Nursing Index. The Ovid MEDLINE database contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 5,500 biomedical journals published in the United States and in 70 other countries. The database contains over 13 million citations dating back to 1950, and is updated daily.
EmBase This link opens in a new window
The Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), produced by Elsevier, is a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine. Coverage is from 1947 up to the present, and is updated weekly.
Informit Health Collection This link opens in a new window
Predominantly Nursing and Allied Health Australasian health information, Informit Health Collection covers more than 190 source titles, including peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, conference papers and e-books. Coverage is 100% full text and includes evidence-based healthcare extending to all nursing specialties and professions.
Content includes research articles, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic and preventative health roles.

Much content included in the Collection is unavailable online elsewhere and includes journals dedicated to specialist and current topics of interest including ageing and aged care, child health and breastfeeding, indigenous health issues, mental health and rehabilitation.