In aged care, one mantra echoes across every shift, every handover, every team meeting: residents come first. But what happens when the systems designed to ensure quality and accountability begin to undermine the very care they’re meant to protect?
Across aged care homes in Australia, care workers are raising a shared frustration – that documentation is increasingly being prioritised above presence, paperwork above people. At the heart of this tension is a culture driven by fear: fear of non-compliance, of litigation, of funding loss – and ultimately, fear of losing your job.
Documentation is undeniably important. It provides transparency, protects staff from false allegations, and ensures continuity of care. It’s also a mechanism for facilities to receive funding under the new Aged Care Act and compliance reforms. But when the pressure to document overtakes the time available to care, it erodes trust and morale.
Frontline staff describe the reality: juggling multiple care needs while keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the iPad, expected to complete meticulous records while answering sensor mats, assisting a fall, supporting a palliative resident, and calming a distressed family member. In some homes, a missed entry is treated more seriously than a missed call bell.
This shift is not accidental – it’s a reflection of how pressure filters down. Middle managers, burdened by compliance and performance metrics, may unintentionally pass that anxiety onto frontline teams. The result? A culture where care workers fear that the only way to prove they’re doing their job is to prioritise the form over the function.
The most confronting part? Some workers are being told – directly or indirectly – that unless it’s documented, it didn’t happen. That documentation equals job security. That the resident in distress can wait, because your notes are your protection.
It’s no wonder some are walking away from the sector they once loved.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Providers and leaders must re-centre on what matters: care first, backed by systems that support, not punish. Documentation should be meaningful, point-of-care, and streamlined. Care minutes should reflect the reality of care – not just what gets entered into software. And compliance should never come at the cost of compassion.
Because when frontline staff are constantly choosing between writing and responding, the real risk is not in what’s left undocumented – it’s in what’s left uncared for.
If we want to retain a passionate, skilled, and resilient workforce, we need to stop asking them to choose between the resident and the paperwork.
It’s time to fix the system, not break the people in it.
Totally agree! This has been a growing problem I have witnessed over the almost 40 yrs I have worked first an AIN at 17 yrs of age initially in aged care and then as a RN working in very varied roles. I now find myself in an Executive Quality and Risk role after years in residential care and now in home care. I have to be honest I am looking forward to retiring, I never felt this way before as like most I am passionate and love my work. So much has changed and the changes are causing significant less time to deliver care or spend quality time with clients. The Government talks of psychosocial harm, the constant changes are a cause of increased stress for staff, too much paperwork demands, not enough time, lack of job satisfaction, it’s just too hard, so they decide to leave. We are all overburdened in the industry, the people we care for will always be at the forefront of what we do and why we do it but how long can we survive, how many nurses and carers will choose a career in aged care in the future?
Well said!
I’ve been in the aged, mental health, and community care sectors for nearly 30 years, and this has always been an issue. It should have been addressed years ago. It’s said that if it’s not written down, it never happened, but while we’re writing “War and Peace,” the clients we care for and love miss out on continuity of care and suffer diminished quality of life. It’s little wonder support workers are leaving, disillusioned and mentally and physically strained by a bureaucracy that is obsessed with ar*e covering. As I age, I shudder at the thought of what the future holds for me in a system that has forgotten the people it’s meant to serve.
In my 10 years of observing care provision in aged care I have concluded that client centred care is a myth. The facilties that I have engaged with are not resourced or geared to to provide it and I suspect few could even describe what it might look like on a day today basis. It is a good aspiration and any move forward would be welcome
Aged care workers all across Australia are leaving the industry, are burned out or have broken their back because of manual handling. Making the industry more transparent is great, making more documentation required in order to get funding does nothing to the CEO or Managers, it only puts more pressure on the care staff. The ones on the floor that are trying to care for their people in the shortest amount of time as they can. Even though they would rather sit and actually talk to the people they care for, there’s no time. Don’t get me started on getting the elderly up at 430 or 5 in the morning for a shower because day staff are always short. That’s just wrong. It’s a thankless job but that’s not because of the residents.
I was an aged care EN for many years. I gave at least an hour every shift in unpaid overtime, so I could complete my paperwork.
My mother who is a bedbound resident in a facility was left on a bedpan by an agency carer because it was time for her to finish her shift. That’s fair enough but she didn’t tell any oncoming staff that she’d left my mother on a pan. There is little that is right with the system.