A1

• The purpose of

  organisational policies and procedures in the health and science sector.

  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
  • Policy
  • Safeguarding Policy
  • Employment Contracts
  • Performance Reviews
  • Disciplinary Policy
  • Grievance policy
• Equality and Diversity


  • With the person next to you, discuss what you think Equality and Diversity means
  • Write a definition for each on your Flip chart paper
• Equality 


  • Equality is ensuring individuals or groups of individuals are treated fairly and equally and no less favourably, specific to their needs, including areas of race, gender, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.
• Discrimination


  Treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy

  •Complies with legislation

  •Ensures fair and equitable treatment

  •Prevents prejudice and discrimination

  •Promotes social inclusion

  •Tackles the cycle of disadvantage

  •Promotes respecting, celebrating and valuing of individuals
• Safeguarding Policy


  •Ensuring the protection from harm of individuals, including those working within the organisation and visitors

  •Following safeguarding policies and procedures Policies and procedures can vary depending on the type of institution but all are covered by the Care Act (2014).

  •Outline the roles of different agencies involved in safeguarding (for example local authority adult social care services and children and young people social care services, GPs, hospitals, education settings, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC)
• Performance Reviews


  •Evaluating work performance against standards and expectations

  •Facilitating feedback to improve

  •Providing opportunities to raise concerns or issues

  •Contributing to continuing professional development (CPD)
• Disciplinary Policy


  •Setting and maintaining expected standards of work and conduct

  •Ensuring consistent and fair treatment

  •Establishing a sequence for disciplinary action
• Grievance policy


  •Providing opportunities for employees to confidentially raise and address grievances

  •Establishing a sequence for raising grievances
• DBS checks


  •DBS = Disclosure  and Barring Service. Different levels of checking are available depending on the level of job

  •Basic – just shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions.

  •Standard – shows spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings

  •Enhanced – in addition to standard, any information held by police that is considered relevant to the role

  •Enhanced with barred shows all the above plus whether the applicant is on the list of people barred from doing the role
• Consequentialism


  •Early writers on consequentialism were Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and one of his students, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

  •This theory says that the correct moral response is related to the outcome, or consequences, of the act, not its intentions or motives.

  •If you were making a decision about a person’s health or social care using this theory, you would look at the likely results of your decision for that person’s wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.
• Deontology


  •Deontology theory says that you should stick to your obligations and duties to a person or society when making a decision because this is ethically correct.

  •It focuses on your intentions rather than the outcomes of your actions.

  •This means, for example, that rules about who receives what treatment are applied universally and consistently

  .•All patients are owed the duty of care and the duty of not being harmed.

  •This theory does not take various factors into account, such as a lack of resources making it impossible to give everyone the same care everywhere.
• Principlism


  •Autonomy: respecting the decision-making capabilities of autonomous people by enabling them to make independent, reasoned and informed choices about their own care.

  •Beneficence: balancing benefits of treatment against the risks and costs, so acting in a way that benefits the patient and promotes the wellbeing of others.

  •Non-maleficence: doing no harm, so avoiding causing harm.

  •Justice: being morally right and fair, distributing a fair share of benefits, doing what the law says and looking at the rights of the people involved.
• Virtue ethics


  •This theory, which has its roots in the work of Plato and Aristotle, focuses on the moral character, or virtues, of the individuals

  .•If using this theory as a health or social care professional, you would make decisions based on your morals and what you feel is the right way to behave towards patients and colleagues

  .•For example, you might take time to explain treatment options to a patient and find out what they want to happen.
• Ethical issues and approaches

  Ethical working includes respecting the basic values and principles that underpin practice, but ethics also involves facing moral questions such as whether to prolong life against the wishes of a terminally ill patient.
• Beneficence


  •Put simply, beneficence means ‘doing good’

  •All healthcare professionals need to follow the course of action that they believe to be in the best interest of their patient

  •However ‘doing good’ is often too simple in the real world. It is better to think of beneficence as ranking the possible options for a patient from best to worst taking account of;
• Nonmaleficence


  •Nonmaleficence means not doing harm duty of care is a legal duty to provide a reasonable standard of care to your patients and to act in ways that protect their safety.

  •You can think of nonmaleficence as a threshold for treatment. In other words, if treatment causes more harm than good then it should not be considered

  •This is different to beneficence, where we consider all the valid treatment options then rank them in order of preference or benefit to the patient. However a treatment could still be the most beneficial and cause more harm than good.
• duty of care 


  A duty of care is a legal duty to provide a reasonable standard of care to your patients and to act in ways that protect their safety.
• Autonomy


  •Autonomy means that everybody has the right to make the final decision about their care or treatment

  •This has not always been the case- there have been many cases where ‘Dr knows best’ in the past and some people might still feel the need to defer to what they see as an authority figure
•  Informed consent


  •Informed consent means that before making that final decision, a person receiving care or treatment has the right to be given all of the relevant information about the care or treatment.

  •This may include the benefits, the potential risks and what might happen if the care or treatment is not given.

  •In some cases the person may not have the capacity to given informed consent. To have capacity the person must be able to;