Candour: The quality of being open and honest.
The duty of candour is a general duty to be open and transparent with people receiving care from you, whether or not something has gone wrong. It applies to every health and social care provider regulated by CQC and requires you to apologise for the harm caused and be open about what has happened. Put simply, candour means being open and honest. Candour can only work when it is part of a wider commitment to safety, listening and learning, with an organisational commitment to continual improvement.
The intention of the duty of candour is to ensure that us as care providers, are open and transparent with people who use our service. It sets out some specific requirements we must follow if things go wrong with care we provide. This can include informing people about the incident, such as the client’s family or Next of Kin and providing reasonable support for them and the client. Most importantly providing truthful information on the incident and an apology when things go wrong.
- We have to tell the Client (or, the Client’s advocate, carer, or family) when something has gone wrong.
- We apologise to the Client (or, the Client’s advocate, carer, or family)
- We offer an appropriate remedy or support to put matters right (if possible)
- We explain fully to the Client (or, the Client’s advocate, carer, or family) the short- and long-term effects of what has happened.
We as Carer’s must also be open and honest with our colleagues, employers and relevant organisations, and take part in reviews and investigations when requested. We have to be open and honest with our regulators and raising concerns where appropriate. We must support and encourage each other to be open and honest, and not stop someone from raising concerns. For instance, if there is a medication error, firstly we apologise to the client (or their advocate, carer, or Family), the carer will then be required to complete a reflective exercise where we can document lessons learnt.
The obligations and challenges of the Duty of Candour remind us that health and social care is still a deeply human activity. It follows from this that making reality of candour is a matter of hearts and minds more important than the matter of systems and processes, important as they may be, a purely compliance-focused approach will fail this is what makes us person centred. We recognise that candour is the right thing to do. The commitment to candour has to be about values, rooted in the genuine engagement of staff, building on their own professional duties and personal commitment to clients. It is right to be clear about thresholds and enforcement, but nothing will be gained if we lose sight of the fundamental purpose of candour, which is to do the right thing for all users of our service.
A notifiable safety incident is any unintended or unexpected incident that occurred in respect of a client during a regulated activity that, in the reasonable opinion of a healthcare professional, could result in, or appears to have resulted in:
• The death of the client:
- When the death relates directly to the incident, rather than to the natural course of the client’s illness or underlying condition.
• Severe harm, moderate harm, or prolonged psychological harm to the client:
- Prolonged psychological harm is psychological harm that a client has experienced or is likely to experience for a continuous period of at least 28 days Moderate harm is harm that requires a moderate increase in treatment and, significant, but not permanent, harm. Severe harm is a permanent lessening of bodily, sensory, motor, physiologic or intellectual functions, including removal of the wrong limb or brain damage, which is related directly to the incident and not related to the natural course of the client’s illness or underlying condition.
