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Continuous improvement in aged care is an ongoing effort to improve an organisation’s care and services. It’s a way services can use feedback to learn and grow stronger.
A plan for continuous improvement will describe the issues and concerns identified and the actions to address them.
When it comes to what people like to eat and drink and how they want to dine, services and residents should work together. This helps you understand and meet their different and changing needs.
It’s important to have a system in place to plan, monitor and continuously improve food, nutrition and dining in residential aged care services. Issues or concerns raised by residents can be described in a plan for continuous improvement, as well as the actions you’ll take to address them.
Benefits of continuous improvement for food, nutrition and dining
Aside from meeting regulatory obligations, continuous improvement of food, nutrition and dining can have a wide range of benefits.
Improve quality of care and services
Tracking and documenting continuous improvement help you and your staff:
- understand residents’ food, drink and dining preferences
- understand the impact you have, in a positive or a negative way
- provide a positive dining experience
- provide quality meals that meet residents’ needs and preferences.
Increase accountability
Planning to improve encourages staff to think about what they do, report issues and suggest changes. This can lead to:
- more staff involvement
- fewer errors when providing food and drinks
- higher staff satisfaction.
Drive innovation
Working together to solve problems and improve resident satisfaction can lead teams to innovate. This might lead to using new technology, digital care tools and the latest evidence-based research to improve service delivery.
Improve trust and confidence
Making a commitment to improve helps residents, their supporters and staff have trust and confidence in the service. Feedback is important, but if it doesn’t lead to change, people can lose trust and confidence.
Tips for making improvements
- Give people different ways to provide feedback. Like feedback forms, food focus groups and by talking to staff.
- Make changes to show that you’re listening. Be open about how you’re addressing issues so everyone feels involved.
- Be open and honest when you can’t change. Sometimes you can’t make a change to meet people’s food, drink and dining preferences. For example, due to staffing or available products. Talk to people about what you can do instead.
- Tell people what you’re doing. When you get feedback and act on it, let people know. It shows that you can make improvements.
Positive Story
‘Our Hospitality Manager closed a feedback loop around resident enjoyment of the meats they cook. He gathered all the comments and advice about the ‘tough meat’ from the food focus groups and complaints data. This led to a full review of cooking methods, with some great tips and guidance from residents taken on board. The meat is now more tender and juicy and the service has seen a downward trend in food-related complaints.’