Quality Standards Resource Centre

This guide covers medication management in aged care, addressing the use of multiple medications, reviewing prescriptions, and the role of multidisciplinary teams. It outlines principles for safe medication practices, deprescribing, administering medication, managing adverse events, and conducting medication reviews. It also provides guidelines for storage, disposal, and modification of medications.

This guide addresses the assessment and management of urinary incontinence in older adults. It outlines a stepwise approach to evaluation, including identifying transient causes, detailed history-taking, medication review, and focused examination. It provides information on management including lifestyle measures, medications, bladder drainage options, and potential referral to specialists based on individual needs and the type of incontinence.

This guide addresses the assessment and management of urinary incontinence in older adults. It outlines a stepwise approach to evaluation, including identifying transient causes, detailed history-taking, medication review, and focused examination. It provides information on management including lifestyle measures, medications, bladder drainage options, and potential referral to specialists based on individual needs and the type of incontinence.

This guide covers fall prevention and management in older adults, focusing on assessing fall risks, involving multidisciplinary teams (e.g. physiotherapists, occupational therapists), and recommending both non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions. It includes steps for post-fall assessments, medication review, and strategies for preventing injuries, with a comprehensive approach to improving outcomes in aged care.
 

This guide addresses mental health in older adults, including social isolation, depression, anxiety, suicide risk, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. It provides consensus-based recommendations for tailored interventions, diagnosis through validated assessments, and management strategies that combine clinical and non-clinical approaches.

This guide provides recommendations for dermatological care in older adults, addressing skin integrity, sun damage, bruising, and wound management. It highlights factors affecting skin health, like systemic disease, medication, and environmental exposure. It recommends regular skin assessments, non-pharmacological interventions, moisturisation, and tailored approaches for managing conditions like ulcers, pruritus, and skin cancer in aged care settings.

This guide provides strategies for managing pain in older adults in aged care, focusing on assessment, non-pharmacological treatments, and pharmacological interventions. It includes practice points on appropriate medication use, considerations for pain assessment tools, and recommendations for safe management, including tailored care and treatment monitoring to improve quality of life.

This guide addresses polypharmacy in aged care, focusing on identifying inappropriate prescribing and reviewing all medications, including prescription, over-the-counter and complementary and alternative medicines. It includes recommendations for reducing medication use through deprescribing, ensuring medication safety, and regular review of renal and hepatic functions. Tools such as Beers Criteria and other screening frameworks are provided to support optimal medication management in older adults.

This guide focuses on deprescribing in aged care, aiming to reduce unnecessary or potentially harmful medications. It provides a framework for reviewing medication, assessing risks and benefits, developing tapering plans, and involving multidisciplinary teams. It provides recommendations including; patient-cantered communication, establishing written plans for medication withdrawal, and monitoring outcomes to improve quality of life.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (the Commission) undertakes a range of regulatory activities to monitor compliance and mitigate risk to aged care consumers. The Commission has incorporated spot check monitoring of infection control practice into its usual regulatory activities. You can find more information about Infection control spot checks here. 

To Dip or Not to Dip (TDONTD) is a quality improvement intervention successfully implemented in UK and Australian aged care homes to improve UTI assessment and antibiotic prescribing appropriateness.

This implementation guide has been drawn from the experiences of homes and champions who have implemented TDONTD, along with feedback from aged care nurses and personal care assistants who have used TDONTD resources.

Older Australians, particularly those that reside in residential aged care settings or in multigenerational households, are vulnerable to the ongoing risk of contracting and becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 and other highly infectious illnesses such as influenza and gastroenteritis.

This visual abstract presents outcomes from a quality improvement project aimed at reducing low-value urine dipstick testing in aged care services. It included nurse education, implementing clinical pathways for UTI identification, and evaluating urinalysis practices and antibiotic prescribing. The findings demonstrate improved antibiotic prescribing appropriateness for UTIs over a 6-month follow-up period. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This huddle tool poster provides guidance on appropriate use of urine dipstick tests in older adults. It explains that asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) is common and not harmful, but that unnecessary antibiotic treatment can be. It suggests confirming urinary tract infections (UTIs) through clinical symptoms rather than dipstick results. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This discussion paper explores strategies to improve medication management in aged care, including reducing inappropriate prescriptions and promoting non-pharmacological interventions. It reviews current interventions' effectiveness, highlights the use of psychotropic medications, and identifies areas for improving practices through multifaceted and multidisciplinary approaches for better resident outcomes and healthcare quality. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards. 

This summary provides an overview of the Aged Care Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Guide. It includes key topics such as IPC systems, risk assessment, standard and transmission-based precautions, staff health and safety, antimicrobial stewardship, and continuous quality improvement. It supports aged care providers in maintaining infection control standards​. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This resource provides clinical advice for health professionals on the safe and effective use of vaccines. It includes guidelines for vaccine administration, special risk groups, and updates on vaccine-preventable diseases. The handbook is a comprehensive reference for ensuring the best immunisation practices, particularly important in protecting vulnerable populations, including those in aged care. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This resource summarises key findings from the AURA 2023 report, focusing on antimicrobial use and resistance in aged care. It provides priorities for action to reduce inappropriate prescriptions, promote antimicrobial stewardship, and improve infection prevention and control in aged care settings, aligning with quality standards to enhance care for older people. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This resource is a training tool designed to help develop and record infection prevention and control training sessions in aged care. It includes templates for learning objectives, content development, and assessment methods, ensuring effective delivery of key infection control practices using structured guidance and eLearning resources. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025 to align with the new Aged Care Act and Quality Standards.

This resource outlines the basic principles of infection prevention and control and explains how to apply these principles using a risk-based approach. The guide supports implementation of the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards. It is a supplementary resource for the Australian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Infection in Healthcare for aged care settings. 

This resource may refer to information that will be updated from 1 November 2025.