Better care for the aged

Masters student Monika Blazewicz with aged care residents.

We need more creative, innovative people in the aged care policy-making area, says Masters student Monika Blazewicz, a youthful veteran of the area.

Blazewicz is a registered nurse, and has worked in residential aged care since she was 17-years-old. She is completing a Graduate Diploma in Psychology, and is “loving” the Master of Ageing and Health she is currently taking at Macquarie University.

“A lot of aged care residents don’t feel happy with the service they’re getting,” she says. “It’s very difficult to balance people’s tastes and wants, but if you’re paying for your care, you want your needs and desires met.”

With Australia’s rapidly ageing population, there will be an exponential demand for services for older people. We currently lack both sufficient infrastructure and community back-up. Good models are interdisciplinary and cost money.

Macquarie courses as preparation

Blazewicz found her nursing training a very useful basis for her Masters’ study. She also thinks a degree in the social sciences would be suitable preparation, since strong research skills are required.

She enjoys the mix of students with whom she is working. There are those with management backgrounds, who know about budgets and managing people. There are people who work at local councils. There are international students, including one from Korea who is giving the others an insight into the increasingly important cross-cultural aspects of aged care.

“We can learn a lot about respect for age from Asian cultures,” Blazewicz says.

Another strength of the course is support from staff, she says.

“It’s phenomenal. They all know their stuff, and they constantly draw in people from other universities and industry to give us the best current knowledge.”

Future prospects

“We live in an ageist society,” says Blazewicz. “The view is that if you go into aged care, you’re finished. But if we consider people’s human needs and develop resident-centred models of care, we can greatly improve the quality and length of lives.”

The employment of more skilled staff should be a priority, she thinks, and to attract them, salaries must rise.

At a policy level, she thinks it would be best to invest now in major systems which can be developed to be more cost-effective over time.

Scandinavian countries such as Sweden had good systems in place when their aged populations started to increase. Australia is economically strong enough to support similar infrastructure, she says.

Her ambition is to work in policy implementation in Canberra, after completing a PhD at Macquarie.

For further information contact Monika Blazewicz at mblazewi@bigpond.net.au

The Department of Health and Chiropractic website is at www.chiro.mq.edu.au