A1: Working within the health and science sector

• 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 policies

  • Provides guidelines on what the organization needs to do to protect individuals' health, wellbeing and human rights
  • Ensures the protection from harm of individuals, including those working within the organisation, service users and visitors
  • 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))
• Employment contracts

  Setting out employment conditions, rights, responsibilities and duties
• 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
• Importance of adhering to quality standards, quality management and audit processes within the health and science sector

  • Ensuring consistency
  • Maintaining health and safety
  • Monitoring processes and procedures
  • Facilitating continuous improvement
  • Facilitating objective, independent reviews (for example enquiries into failures in safeguarding)
• Key principles of ethical practice in the health and science sectors

  • Autonomy and informed consent
  • Truthfulness and confidentiality (for example ensuring validity of outcomes)
  • Beneficence
  • Nonmaleficence
  • Justice (for example fairness, equality and respect for all)
• Autonomy


  Means that everyone has the right to make the final decision about their care or treatment
• Informed consent


  Means that before making that final decision, a person receiving care or treatment has the right to be given all the relevant information about the care or treatment
• Truthfulness

  Is an obligation on the part of science and healthcare staff
• Confidentiality

  Is central to the relationship between patients, care-receivers or the general public on the one hand and science and healthcare staff on the other
• Beneficence

  Means doing good
• Nonmaleficence

  Means not doing harm
• Purpose of following professional codes of conduct

  • Clarifies missions, values, principles and standards that everyone must adhere to
  • Outlining expected professional behaviors and attitudes
  • Outlining rules and responsibilities within particular organizations
  • Promoting confidence in the organization
• Professional bodies/organizations that may write professional codes of conduct

  • Nursing and midwifery council (NMC)
  • The Health and Care Professional Council (HCPC)
  • The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
  • The Royal College of Nursing(RCN)
  • The Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA)
  • Public health england and more
• Difference between technical, higher technical and professional occupations in health, healthcare science and science

  • Technical: skilled occupations that a college leaver or an apprentice would be entering, typically requiring qualifications at levels 2/3
  • Higher technical: require more knowledge and skills acquired through experience in the workplace or further technical education, and typically require qualifications at levels 4/5
  • Professional: occupations where there is a clear career progression from higher technical occupations, as well as occupations where a degree apprenticeship exists
• Opportunities to support progression within the health and science sector

  • Undertaking further/higher education programmes
  • Undertaking apprenticeship/degree apprenticeship
  • Undertaking continuing professional development (CPD)
  • Joining professional bodies
  • Undertaking an internship
  • Undertaking a scholarship