"I think that is an important gap in the system at the moment," he said.

Professor Murphy, who is the principal medical adviser to the Minister and the Department of Health, said there should be a national minimum set of standard for training for personal care workers working in aged care including specific training for dealing with dementia, and more education for GPS in this area.

"You cannot fix this problem or the problem of residential aged care more generally by simply by regulation alone," he told the commission.

"In January, Minister Wyatt asked me to convene a meeting of clinical leaders from the colleges, the AMA and Parliament House and he expressed his personal distress at hearing some of the stories ... he felt that progress wasn't quick enough. And he wanted to look at regulatory options," Professor Murphy said.

Professor Murphy told the commission that the expert committee was convened at the request of Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt to look specifically at the issue of chemical restraint.

"The broader strategy is again to identify all of the doctors who work in aged care and target them with educational material ... We're thinking of even targeting them with short sharp video messages from me that point out to them that, you know, what, if they are continuing to prescribe in a manner which is not based by the evidence and if they're not getting proper informed consent, they are exposing themselves significantly to allegations of inappropriate and unprofessional practice," he said.

The commission also heard from Dr Peter Foltyn, the Visiting Dental Officer, from St Vincent’s Hospital, who called for better oral care in residential settings, as infections caused by poor dental hygiene were often misdiagnosed as something else. He said the government spent $3 million on developing a thorough guideline for geriatric oral health in residential aged care facilities.

"The problem I have is that this came out in 2009, most residential aged care facilities don't know it exists. So the information is available but it's not being provided and therefore not passed down the line to the assistants in nursing that are providing the daily management for their residents," he said.

"Unfortunately, in Australia we have one of the highest turnover rates of staff in aged care facilities and consequently within a few years most who had done the training were no longer at that facility and that knowledge was lost. And the relationship between oral health and deterioration of residents was missed.

"My big area of concern is that oral health is not part of ACAT [Aged care assesmment] ... GPs don't know everything about the mouth," he said.