The short version: the Aged Care Transition to Practice Program gives nurses in their first two years in aged care a funded mentor, structured training and CPD hours, at no cost to the nurse. Few new starters in Tasmanian aged care seem to know it exists.
Starting in aged care nursing without a hospital’s usual scaffolding, senior staff down the hall, a formal orientation roster, a clinical educator on shift, can feel like being handed more autonomy than support. A federally funded program exists specifically to close that gap, and it is underused relative to how many nurses it could help.
The Aged Care Transition to Practice Program (ACTTP), delivered through the Australian College of Nursing and funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, is open to nurses in their first two years of aged care practice. It pairs each participant with a mentor allocated by their employer, an experienced RN with at least three years in aged care, alongside a structured 12-month program of study days and self-paced modules.
None of this requires the nurse to change employer, relocate, or take unpaid leave to participate. The employer applies to take part, allocates the mentor, and gives the participant paid study time for the nine full days across the year. For the nurse, the only real requirement is being within the eligibility window and asking whether their workplace has, or will set up, a place.
What the program covers
Over 12 months and roughly 95 hours of study, spread across nine full days, the program works through material a hospital graduate program would usually cover but that aged care settings do not always have the staff to deliver in-house: medication management and high-risk drugs, infection prevention and outbreak management, dementia behaviours, palliative and end-of-life care, and clinical leadership. Participants close the program with a portfolio, and it counts toward CPD hours a nurse would otherwise need to find elsewhere.
- Completed your nursing degree within the last two years
- Working in a residential or home aged care setting as an RN or EN
- Your employer has, or is willing to set up, an agreement with the Australian College of Nursing
- No cost to you, the program is funded by the Department of Health
If you’re considering that first move into aged care nursing and want to see what’s available in Tasmania right now, our current roles are a reasonable place to start.
Get in touch| Without the program | With the program |
|---|---|
| Learning aged care’s specifics informally, on the job | Nine structured study days covering medication, dementia and palliative care specifically |
| A mentor if your site happens to have the staff to spare | A mentor allocated to you by name, funded by the program |
| CPD hours found wherever you can source them | 95 hours of CPD built into the program |
| No formal record beyond your own notes | A completed portfolio you can point to in your next application |
Why this matters more in Tasmania
A workforce this small cannot always put a dedicated clinical educator on every site, and new graduates in regional and rural Tasmanian facilities are often the ones furthest from a hospital’s training infrastructure. A funded, structured mentoring relationship does some of the work a bigger organisation would otherwise absorb through sheer headcount, and it gives a new nurse a documented, portable credential rather than informal on-the-job learning that is hard to describe on a CV later.
There is a well-documented pattern of new graduates leaving aged care within their first year, often citing a lack of support rather than the work itself as the reason. A funded mentoring structure will not fix every cause of that, but it directly targets the part that is most fixable: making sure a new nurse has a named, trained person to ask, and a program that runs whether or not their particular facility has the internal resourcing to build one from scratch.
It is also, deliberately, not a generic induction. Every module is written for aged care specifically, not adapted from a hospital graduate program, which matters because the clinical picture is different: more dementia and behavioural care, more palliative and end-of-life work, and far less immediate access to a senior colleague at 2am than a new graduate would have on a hospital ward. A program built around that reality, rather than assuming it away, is worth more than its CPD hours suggest on paper.
A mentor allocated to you by name, and a program that runs whether or not your site has the staff to build one itself, changes what a first year in aged care feels like.
The bottom line
The program runs until 30 June 2027, is free to eligible nurses, and depends on your employer having, or agreeing to set up, a place with the Australian College of Nursing. If you are within two years of graduating and working in aged care and nobody has mentioned this to you, it is worth raising with your employer directly rather than assuming it does not apply.
If you’re a nurse: eligibility is about your registration date and your setting, not your employer’s size. Ask directly whether your workplace has a place in the program, and read more on the CHC blog about starting well in your first aged care role.
If you’re a facility leader: offering a funded, structured transition program costs you rostering time, not a training budget, and it is a genuine retention lever for a workforce that is expensive to replace.
If you’re weighing up your first move into aged care nursing, or your next one, Community Health Connect can talk you through what’s realistic in the Tasmanian market.
Get in touch