The University of South Australia is Australia’s University of Enterprise. Their culture of innovation is anchored around global and national links to academic, research and industry partners. Kineo are proud to announce we are now one of those partners and are working together to build credible, engaging digital learning products that 'actually make a difference'.

Our first collaboration sees the completion of four modules on Intercultural Communication in Aged Care.

Increasing linguistic and cultural diversity among nurses and care workers, combined with growing complexity in health profiles (e.g. the challenging behaviours or unmet needs associated with dementia), are increasing the complexity of communicating safety and care. This complexity poses an increasing challenge among staff and those they care for and is especially acute where communication takes place across languages and cultures.

The better we know the language and culture, the person and the situation, the better we are at intercultural communication and addressing care, challenging behaviours and unmet needs.

Reasons and benefits of the new course: This set of courses which can be undertaken individually on the specific topic in question, or as a full suite, builds on a recent University of South Australia research project (Scarino, O’Neill and Crichton, 2017). The aim of that project was to develop professional learning resources and practical strategies to enhance the capacity of supervisory and direct care staff to manage this communication complexity. Of particular concern in contexts of linguistic and cultural diversity is communicating care and safety around challenging behaviours or unmet needs.

The project team collaborated closely at all stages with management and staff at Helping Hand and South Cross Care and the project Advisory Group. The outcome of the project is a set of professional learning modules that reflect principles of intercultural learning. This suite is aimed at supervisory and direct care staff working in multicultural aged care environments.

This suite provides an understanding of: 

• ageing, cognitive decline and dementia, and communication
• linguistic, cultural and faith-based diversity in aged care
• the role of languages, cultures and faiths in care
• the role of personal histories, life experiences and memories in care, and
• how staff and residents together can optimise care and safety.

These courses feature:

• animation and interactivity
• professional video
• professional audio
• Mobile responsiveness
• WCAG 2.0 accessibility, and
• a certificate of completion.

Kineo Courses product updates are not an automatic process. For current Kineo clients, please contact your account manager to get further information and arrange roll over to the new version of a product you are subscribed to, or discuss enabling access to one you are not. If you are not a Kineo client and would like to know more about the course updates and our wider product offering, please call 1300 303 318 for further assistance.