Annual Training and Personal Development: How We Keep Our Team’s Skills Current

Why this Sets us Apart

Chris Barnard Health is the only nursing agency that is also an Approved Aged Care Provider. In practice, that means our entire workforce, not just registered nurses, is trained and developed to the same high standard expected across the aged care sector under the Aged Care Quality Standards, and in many cases, we go further than that baseline. 

Mandatory training is delivered through the Ausmed Learning Management System, our partner for evidence-based education aligned with the Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, the Aged Care Act 2024, and current Australian clinical best practice. Every role has its own annual training schedule, scoped to what that role involves: 

• Registered Nurses: fifteen modules covering clinical assessment, wound care and medication safety, through to dementia care, palliative care, and clinical governance, most refreshed annually, some every two years 

• Enrolled Nurses: a matching program scoped to their practice scope, covering infection prevention, medication safety, dementia care and falls prevention 

• Personal Care Assistants: training in recognising clinical deterioration, medication awareness, falls and continence care, alongside the same rights-based care and safety modules required of every role 

• Cleaning Services staff: infection prevention, safe chemical handling, and environmental cleaning and waste management 

• Kitchenhands: food safety, nutrition and hydration awareness, and safe food handling 

• Chefs: texture-modified diets (IDDSI) and dysphagia awareness, allergen management, and nutrition for older people 

Every role, regardless of whether it involves direct clinical care, also completes annual training in the Aged Care Quality Standards and Code of Conduct, mandatory reporting and elder abuse awareness, manual handling, workplace health and safety, and cyber security. Cultural safety and diversity training is refreshed every two years across every role, reflecting the diversity of both our workforce and the clients we support. 

Beyond Online Learning 

Online modules are backed by role-specific practical competency assessments, CPR, manual handling, medication administration, infection control, food safety, and environmental cleaning, conducted where applicable, so skills are demonstrated in practice, not just studied on a screen. Our staff are also familiar with the medication management systems commonly used across aged care, including BestMed, Leecare, and AutumnCare. Where a specific facility uses a different system, we arrange tailored training on request, because we’d rather adapt to a client’s existing setup than expect them to adapt to ours. 

Learning that Doesn’t Stop at a Module 

Throughout the year, we also bring in industry specialists and subject matter experts to run free, face-to-face training and workshops, open to all staff, not just senior clinicians. These sessions cover emerging topics and practical skills that a standard annual curriculum can’t always anticipate, giving our whole team, from nurses through to kitchen and cleaning staff, ongoing exposure to current thinking in aged care, not a static body of knowledge learned once. 

Why Face-to-Face Training Still Matters in a Digital World

Online learning modules are efficient, consistent and easy to track, which is exactly why they form the backbone of our mandatory program. But some things are genuinely better learned in a room with an expert who can answer a specific, real-world question on the spot, a tricky wound care scenario, a difficult family dynamic, a new piece of equipment. That’s the gap our face-to-face workshops are designed to fill, and making them free and open to every staff member, not just senior clinicians, reflects a simple belief: everyone who enters a client’s home or life deserves the same access to genuine, ongoing development, not a two-tier system where only some roles get invested in. 

How we Track it, So Nothing Lapses 

Every training record and competency outcome is maintained electronically, supporting both continuous quality improvement and regulatory compliance. An automated system flags upcoming expiries, and staff are followed up with directly before a credential or training requirement lapses unnoticed. This is the same renewal discipline applied to our credentialing process, described in Credentialing 101: What Every Aged Care Provider Should Check Before a Worker Starts, extended into ongoing professional development. 

Why this Matters to You 

A credential checked once at hiring tells you very little about the person caring for you or your family member a year, or five years, later. Structured, ongoing, role-specific training is what actually keeps that trust current over time. It’s also, quietly, one of the reasons our staff stay with us longer than the sector average, people tend to stay where they feel genuinely supported to keep developing, not just employed to fill a shift

This is the training every team member moves into after the onboarding process described in From Application to Approval: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Nursing Onboarding Process, and it’s a core part of why we’ve chosen to invest in our own workforce rather than lean on rotating agency staff, see Why We Invest in Our Own Workforce Instead of Relying on Rotating Agency Staff for the fuller picture. 

 

Want to talk it through?

Call our team on 1300 602 469 for a free, no-obligation conversation, or read the full pillar guide: Can You Trust Who Walks Through Your Door? A Family’s Guide to Aged Care Worker Vetting