The Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing (AJAN) has released its June-August 2020 issue, featuring a guest editorial written by aged care advocate and academic Professor Joseph Ibrahim.

The journal, which is freely available online, also contains a number of peer reviewed research articles and discussion papers relevant to nursing and midwifery practice.

Topics in this issue include, nurses who care for people with intellectual and developmental disability; recognition for registered nurses supporting students on clinical placement; the effects of a hospital-based perinatal breastfeeding program on exclusive breastfeeding in Taiwan, and prehospital interventions to prevent hypothermia in trauma patients.

Professor Ibrahim’s guest editorial considers the structural domains in the aged care sector in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Visiting Medical Officer and Aged Care Directorate at the Ballarat Health Service and Professor and Head at the Health Law and Ageing Research Unit, Monash University, Professor Ibrahim argues the pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted existing primary failures in the provision of residential aged care in Australia.

Yet he suggests while the aged care sector requires transformation, the havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic globally and nationally could create an environment where required changes are lost to other priorities.

When reflecting on the pandemic Professor Ibrahim advises we must objectively examine the domains of governance, workforce, models of care, evaluation and finally, resources and infrastructure.

He states that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major gaps in each of these domains and that a prudent approach will be required if we are to guard against the high COVID-19 case fatality rate of residents in aged care homes and to progress with much needed long-term changes.

Speaking further on aged care and COVID-19, Professor Ibrahim has released a podcast series which takes the audience through the complex issues in aged care in a practical way to support aged care staff and managers.

Prof Joe Covid-19 Aged Care Podcast can be found here.

To read Professor Ibrahim’s editorial and AJAN’s latest research and discussion papers go to ajan.com.au