Current Programs
- Moubray Street (Coppin Centre and Colbran Lodge)
- Centennial Lodge
- Darvall Lodge
- Gregory Lodge
- Transition Care
In December 2006, in response to a recommendation from the Board, The Trustees of Royal Freemasons established a "Best Practice and Research Fund" with an initial grant from the Trustees and an additional contribution from the Keith and Aya Thornton Homes Fund. The aim of the new fund was to permit and foster the continuing involvement of Royal Freemasons in clinical best practice implementation programs and related research to be undertaken in collaboration with recognised research institutions.
Withdrawals from the fund were initially directed at the need for internal support of Royal Freemasons involvement in the completion of the National Health and Medical Research Council - funded research program entitled "New methods of pain assessment in non-verbal demented older adults", and allowed the employment of a specialist pain nurse whose role included both facilitation of the interface between the researchers and our staff and residents, as well as dissemination of the benefits of improved pain identification, assessment and management through the organisation.
More recently we have enjoyed a significant increase in research activity in keeping with our mission and with an aim that each of our residential facilities should be involved in one significant best practice or research program.
By dint of our "Best Practice and Research Fund" we were subsequently able and fortunate to employ Marie Vaughan, a highly qualified Aged Care Nurse Practitioner, who has excellent research and teaching skills, and who also has particular expertise in both pain management and dementia. Marie Vaughan continues to facilitate ongoing and optimal collaboration between the project teams from academic research faculties and our own management and staff teams. Her role and capacities will also ensure dissemination of beneficial practice change in all of the disciplines covered by the research projects throughout our organization.
We are currently involved in two major National Department of Health and Ageing:-Encouraging Best Practice in Residential Aged Care (EBPRAC) Program projects, conducted respectively at our Moubray St and Centennial House facilities.
Moubray Street (Coppin Centre and Colbran Lodge)
The EBPRAC project at Moubray St is entitled "Implementation of Sustainable Evidence-Based Practice for the Assessment and Management of Pain in Residential Aged Care Facilities". This project was launched in May 2008. The National Ageing Research Institute leads the national consortium for this project. The other project sites are: the Hall and Prior Clarence Estate Residential Aged Care Facility in Albany WA; Uniting Church Homes, Avon Valley Residency, Northam, WA; and St Paul de Chartres Residential Aged Care, Boronia Heights, Queensland. The chosen implementation sites have provided a range of levels of care including urban; rural; dementia specific; and ethnic mix.
This project represents the most comprehensive and large scale pain management initiative yet seen in the Australian residential aged care sector and once it is completed and the results are analysed and reported, it is expected to deliver important and enduring beneficial advancements in practice.
The project has funded a "Pain Champion" nursing role at Coppin Centre and Colbran Lodge as well as providing funding for backfill to allow all staff to participate in intensive training in pain identification, assessment, and management.
A number of staff at Coppin Centre and Colbran Lodge who had completed one-to-one supervision and small group education sessions during the project have been awarded Pain Management Certificates.
One of the aims of this best practice pain project is to develop a model whereby aged care homes could establish effective supportive relationships with local specialist pain services for the benefit of that minority of residents who have more severe and complex pain conditions. It was therefore arranged for a team of specialists including doctors; a psychologist; a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist, and a social worker from the Royal Melbourne Hospital Aged Care Pain Service to come to Coppin Centre to evaluate and treat those residents with more severe pain conditions. The team attended over a period of weeks and our own staff, when possible and appropriate, accompanied the residents during these assessments and treatment sessions with aim of gaining enhanced skills in this area.
Professor Gibson believes that this visit of a multidisciplinary specialist team from a pain centre to an aged care facility may be a world first, and plans to report this experience and the outcomes of this model approach at forthcoming International conferences.
Centennial Lodge
In 2008 Royal Freemasons, represented by Centennial Lodge, as one of six selected care provider organisations, joined a consortium including three National Dementia Collaborative Research Centres; the Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health University of Technology Sydney and La Trobe University, in successfully applying for funding to conduct another EBPRAC project entitiled: "The EN-ABLE Program: Developing and testing a toolkit for the Implementation & Evaluation of Person-Centred Evidence-Based Responses to Need Driven Behaviours associated with Dementia (NDBs)." This project will also enjoy the support of an outstanding national and international academic reference group.
This study has begun in the second half of 2009 and Royal Freemasons looks forward to experience and progress with the project model, with its emphasis on best practice in the provision of person-centred evidence-based ways to recognise and manage need-driven dementia compromised behaviours. The successful completion of this project will represent a major advance in developing a sustainable model of care provision for the most common and demanding day to day care issue encountered within our services and within the aged care sector as a whole.
Royal freemasons has long-established cooperative relationships with the lead Victorian consortium member, Professor Rhonda Nay's Department at La Trobe University, which has included previous pilot studies in the management of behaviours of concern in the residential care setting as well as implementation studies for the sustainable introduction of Australian Pain Society aged care pain guidelines.
The Project addresses the target area Behaviour Management in residential aged/dementia care and is focused on skilling residential care staff to respond in person-centred evidence-based ways to need-driven dementia compromised behaviours. The central project goal is to implement EN-ABLE - an education and training model for addressing need-driven dementia compromised behaviours that utilizes evidence-based practice embedded within the philosophy, principles and practices of "Person-Centred Care".
Darvall Lodge
There is current international interest in studies to examine the use of multi-sensory therapies to improve the care and quality of life of aged care home residents who have dementia. Darvall Lodge has been involved in an initial Phase 1 study to examine the use of multi-sensory therapies including Snoezelen Therapy for managing dementia behaviours in Victorian residential aged care services. Snoezelen Therapy was developed in the 1980s in the Netherlands initially for people with learning disabilities but has been found to have particular potential applicability in nursing homes. It provides a broad and systematic method for the provision of a range of pleasing visual, auditor, olfactory and tactile stimuli which can be appreciated and enjoyed by people with dementia.
This research is being led by Dr Michael Bauer from the Division of Nursing & Midwifery at the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care and is being funded by ANZ Trustees and the JO & JR Wicking Trust.
Phase 2 of this research will be a in depth evaluation of Snoezelen Therapy in one selected facility and Royal Freemasons is delighted that Darvall Lodge, having recently installed a Snoezelin room, has been selected to collaborate in the second phase of this research.
The Darvall Lodge Snoezelen room itself represents the culmination of the efforts of many people and has been jointly funded through the generosity of the Brunswick United Lodge, No. 924 and a one for one grant from the Board of Benevolence of The United Grand Lodge of Victoria. Former Trustee and Past Chairman of the Royal Freemasons Board of Management, RWBro Kevin Duckett,PDGM was instrumental in seeking the joint donations and Wor Bro Albert Smith,PJGD, a resident at Darvall Lodge, also offered generous support.
Gregory Lodge
Gregory Lodge is currently involved in a project entitled "A Pilot dementia knowledge project". This pilot project is a survey of care staff and family members of people with moderate to severe dementia. It is important groundwork for a major planned study involving Gregory Lodge, to develop evidence based and high quality palliative care approach for residents with late stage dementia.
These studies aim to address the important ethical and practical dilemmas about the appropriateness of invasive medical interventions for people with profound neurodegenerative disorders and examine practical medical and multidisciplinary processes for meeting the needs and wishes of these residents and their families.
This research is led by Dr Fran McInerney, Associate Professor, Aged Care, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University Victoria and Catholic Homes. It is funded by the Wicking Dementia Research Unit.
Once the results of the pilot study are known, submissions will be made for funding of a major study in which Royal Freemasons Gregory Lodge would be an aged care sector partner for the ongoing study with the collaborating academic organisations.
Transition Care
There is significant National and International interest in innovative service development and integration at the interface between health services and aged care services.
The Alfred Health-Royal Freemasons Transition Care Program (TCP) is a well established partnership that has grown over 5 years to comprise 28 residential places and 18 community places. Transition Care provides older people with up to 12 weeks of additional multidisciplinary rehabilitation and case management following their hospitalisation in order to permit optimal recovery and the opportunity to return home, or alternately to access the most appropriate form of new accommodation.
In partnership with Alfred Health we reported our early experience with the TCP program at a National Healthcare Innovations Conference in 2005 - as referenced below. More recently GMMS Dr Sam Scherer has been invited to give a paper on our experience with the Transition Care Program at the Singapore Geriatric Medical Society Biennial Scientific Conference in late 2009. The conference theme is: "Forging an Integrative Roadmap for the Care of Older People" and reflects the growing interest in Asia in new models of care at the health care-aged care interface.
The Alfred Health-Royal Freemasons TCP is a well established leading edge program and this invitation is an opportunity to review both the recent scientific literature and 5 years of our own outcome data from this program. This work could open up exciting opportunities for further research in this area including collaboration with Asian centres, given the high degree of current interest in programs such as TCP and also our Outreach (Community Aged Care Package) program in that part of the world.
Conference Papers on Transition Care
Australian Resource Centre for Healthcare Innovations Conference Sydney 2005
Innovations in the Delivery of Transitional Care for Older Australians.
Report of Community Interim Care Partnership between Freemasons' Homes and
Caulfield General Medical Centre.
Mead V, Scherer S, Scharf S.
Singapore Geriatric Medical Society. Biennial Scientific Conference 2009.
Forging an Integrative Roadmap for the Care of Older People.
"Insights from the Alfred Health - Royal Freemasons Transition Care Project, Melbourne, Australia." Scherer SC, Mead V
