Biography
Jennifer Grieve is the Executive Director of Residential & Community Care for the Hall & Prior Health & Aged Care Group.
A Registered Nurse with an extensive background in seniors’ health and aged care, Jennifer has contributed to the development of a variety of community and residential health and aged care services and programs throughout metropolitan and rural Western Australia since 1972. Her leadership roles have included management, safety and quality coordination and management, health and aged care research, clinical practice, staff development and health promotion for older people.
Jennifer has worked for the Hall & Prior Group since 2002 in executive management roles which have included leadership, management, teaching, staff development and research.
In 2005, Jennifer became an inaugural fellow (Clinical Leadership) or the Joanna Briggs Institute for Evidence Based Practice.
Through Hall & Prior, Jennifer leads the organisation’s clinical operations, including oversight of clinical, commercial and compliance outcomes for 14 residential aged care homes in Western Australia. She has coordinated significant organisational change programs, including introducing a multidisciplinary clinical support team into the Hall & Prior organisational structure.
Jennifer is passionate about leading and mentoring clinical and nursing staff, as well as providing exceptional care to older people.
Grieve, J.
Paper
Best practice in wound care: Advancing a sustainable healthy skin program in Australian residential care facilities
Approaches to improving quality of health care and safety for wounds management is well documented and firmly accepted. With the advent of population ageing, various care models and approaches have and continue to emerge to ensure that whole-of-person care programs for older people go beyond the historic and mainly consumer passive, clinician-driven model. We are now moving towards a truly consumer-clinician driven and balanced model; expanding the definition of care to include the promotion of wellness and risk mitigation.
For the past 15 years an Australian aged and health care organisation has been committed to research and establishing best practice in wound care by partnering with two Australian tertiary institutions and a state Government authority to undertake three skin-care investigations including:
- A prevalence and incidence study on chronic wounds produced by the state authority.
- A landmark post-intervention study designed to investigate the effectiveness of an integrated pressure ulcer management system using Commonwealth funding.
- A randomised trial on dressings that aimed to prevent sacral and heel pressure injuries.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the organisational wound care journey and highlight how the organisation has adopted changes to ensure the sustainability of these best practice initiatives in line with finite resources. To support this research program, the clinical leadership model implemented by the aged care organisation involved a registered nurse-led model of care. Internal capacity was built by collaborating with health and university sectors for education, resulting in organisational-wide specialist nursing leads and staff who championed skin care in each facility. This ensures a seamless continuum of clinical expertise for assessment, implementing and evaluation of skin and wound care management.
Furthermore, the organisation has undertaken two extensive internal medical product evaluative studies over the past 10 years. This has resulted in standardised clinical practice, collaboration with external suppliers for ongoing education, and evaluation of the resources associated with this program. These initiatives have demonstrated high quality care outcomes, as well providing effective solutions to ever increasing social and economic burden caused by wounds. These initiatives are transferable to other aged care facilities.
Over the next six months the organisation is embarking on the next phase of this wound care journey. Collaborating with a university it will build capacity in a research project towards optimising wellness to holistically manage skin care and mitigate risk reflective of the emerging care paradigm and thinking in health and aged care of elder persons.
