When preparing for an aged care audit, many organisations focus on training completion rates - ensuring staff have completed specific training items and met minimum compliance requirements. In a recent Audit Readiness Tool webinar, we reviewed the must-have training items.
While this is important, the new audit strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, which demand far more than attendance or completion records.
The reality? More evidence items relate to education systems and processes than specific training topics. This means audits will assess how training is planned, implemented, and evaluated - not just whether it happened.
Beyond Training: What Auditors Will Look For
An audit will examine key elements that demonstrate a structured, effective training system, including:
- Policies & Processes: How does your organisation ensure training responds to risks, feedback, and performance gaps?
- Records & Documents: Do you have a training needs analysis, a clear training matrix, and competency-based education in core matters?
- Systems & Oversight: How do you track training effectiveness, ensure training records are up to date, and implement improvements?
- Key Stakeholder Feedback: Can workers, governing bodies, and individuals provide input into a process to improve training effectiveness?
Actioning These Evidence Items
To move beyond just delivering training, organisations need a best-practice cycle of Plan, Implement and Evaluate:
- Plan: Align training with strategic priorities, risk management, and workforce needs.
- Implement: Use CPD, mentoring, and leadership programs to build real capability beyond mandatory training.
- Evaluate: Assess whether training is achieving outcomes by adapting processes based on data and feedback.
This approach ensures that training is a compliance exercise and a strategic tool for workforce capability and quality improvement.
Ready to Strengthen Your Training System?
Watch the full webinar to learn how to build a robust, audit-ready training system. For a deeper dive into building an effective, audit-ready training system, read Effective Training System on the L&D Toolbox.
Register now for all of our upcoming webinars designed to help prepare you for the strengthened Standards - or come back to view past recordings.
- Get Audit-Ready for the Strengthened Standards
- Guide to Ausmed's Audit Readiness Tool
- Guide to Preparing for Your First Audit Under the New Standards
- Why Audit Readiness is a Commitment to Quality
Ensure your organisation is prepared for your first audit under the strengthened Standards.
Author
Zoe Youl
Zoe Youl is a Critical Care Registered Nurse with over ten years of experience at Ausmed, currently as Head of Community. With expertise in critical care nursing, clinical governance, education and nursing professional development, she has built an in-depth understanding of the educational and regulatory needs of the Australian healthcare sector.
As the Accredited Provider Program Director (AP-PD) of the Ausmed Education Learning Centre, she maintains and applies accreditation frameworks in software and education. In 2024, Zoe led the Ausmed Education Learning Centre to achieve Accreditation with Distinction for the fourth consecutive cycle with the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Commission on Accreditation. The AELC is the only Australian provider of nursing continuing professional development to receive this prestigious recognition.
Zoe holds a Master's in Nursing Management and Leadership, and her professional interests focus on evaluating the translation of continuing professional development into practice to improve learner and healthcare consumer outcomes. From 2019-2022, Zoe provided an international perspective to the workgroup established to publish the fourth edition of Nursing Professional Development Scope & Standards of Practice. Zoe was invited to be a peer reviewer for the 6th edition of the Core Curriculum for Nursing Professional Development.
