Qualification: T Level Technical Qualification in Health
Unit: Occupational specialism core: Supporting Healthcare
Learning outcome: Performance outcome 1: Assist with an individual’s overall care and needs to ensure comfort and wellbeing
Assessment criteria: K1.3 The requirements for following a duty of care and duty of candour within the scope of the supporting healthcare role
- All healthcare workers must understand their responsibilities relating to duty of care and duty of candour
- Duty of care is the ethical, moral and legal obligation to not do anything that could cause harm to individuals and ensure that they are kept safe (as far as is practically possible)
- Duty of care extends to not omitting to do something that could cause harm to individuals (e.g. not providing enough fluids for hydration or not administering required medication)
- Duty of candour is the responsibility to be honest and transparent when errors are made
- This means owning up to mistakes and informing the individuals that are affected by them and explaining what went wrong
- Duty of candour also means apologising when mistakes are made and providing the individual with support or treatment to remedy the situation
- Duty of candour should also catalyse the process of investigating how the mistake was made and putting systems in place to prevent it from happening again in the future