Duty of Candour Annual Report 2023/2024
The Social Care Community Partnership Limited, trading as The Nursing Partnership
At The Nursing Partnership, we are committed to delivering high-quality care and ensuring the best possible outcomes for those using our services. When an unintended or unexpected incident causes harm, we follow the Duty of Candour procedure. This means we inform those affected (or their families/carers) to ensure they understand what has happened and provide an apology. We also monitor and review our learning from these incidents to improve our quality of care.
An important part of this duty is to provide an annual report showing any learning from Duty of Candour incidents in our service. This report describes how our care service has operated the Duty of Candour between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024. We hope you find this report useful.
| Service Address | The Social Care Community Partnership, Unit 9, Straiton Business Parc, Edinburgh, EH20 9QZ |
| Date of report | April 2024 |
| How have you made sure that you (and your staff) understand your responsibilities relating to the duty of candour and have systems in place to respond effectively? How have you done this? | We undertake training of all nurses and healthcare assistants in the need for honest transparent compassionate care and highlight their personal responsibilities to be open and honest, to apologise when required and to explain to the person or their representative if they are without capacity what happened, what the investigation revealed and require a reflective practice statement on how their practice or behaviour will change. |
| Do you have a Duty of Candour Policy or written duty of candour procedure? | Yes, we have a policy, and we also have the NMC statement which is issued to nurses. Care Inspectorate requirements are also highlighted |
| Number of incidents in the 2022 – 2023 financial year | 4 potential incidents, all handled at the source of care, and we completed 1 notifiable event form to the CI. |
| Nature of the incident(s) | Medication errors |
| Did the responsible person for triggering duty of candour appropriately follow the procedure? If not, did this result is any under or over reporting of duty of candour? | Yes, this was handled by the care facility, we noted it as part of the internal investigation. We provided remedial/refresher training. |
| What lessons did you learn | As we do not supervise the person on a one-to-one basis whilst placed with a client, we rely on the client to keep us updated on feedback of performance on a regular basis to enable us to take any performance issues into account. Over time we have consistently liaised with clients and built relationships to ensure standards or identify HR issues. We continue to follow all our policies and procedures and undertake comprehensive recruitment procedures. We require mandatory training updates as determined by best practice or as practice change comes into place or based on complaint investigation highlighting a need. |
| What learning or improvements have been put in place | Continued comprehensive personal development. |
| Did this result is a change / update to your duty of candour policy / procedure? | No, the policy is comprehensive, but we always examine the procedure and guidance notes |
| How did you share lessons learned and who with? | Communication with the client who highlighted the complaint. |
| Could any further improvements be made? | None, as comprehensive recruitment carried out and feedback from clients sought on a regular basis. There is an annual appraisal system. Complaints are dealt with under Scottish Government guidance and timescales. |
| What systems do you have in place to support staff to provide an apology in a person-centred way and how do you support staff to enable them to do this? | We have a comprehensive complaints procedure, where we follow Scottish Government procedures and timescales, responding within 3 days, usually immediately upon contact, we investigate gathering all the information, we ask the person concerned to tell us what happened, what they learned through a reflective practice statement. We speak to the care home and/or hospital and issue a final response within 20 days, or we explain why we cannot do that and agree more time to complete the procedure. We also determine if the facility is willing to continue working with the company/or the candidate. We discuss the outcome of all complaints and the need for apologies. |
| What support do you have available for people involved in invoking the procedure and those who might be affected? | We have an inhouse Clinical team consisting of our Group Compliance & Clinical Governance Director and our Nurse Manager, both of whom worked as Nurses at a senior level in various healthcare settings and have a wealth of clinical experience. Our clinical team pick up all complaints and carry out investigations whilst liasing with the complainant throughout. Every candidate has a dedicated consultant who allocates their placements suitable to their scope of practice. We also have an out of hours on-call team should any issues occur in the evenings or over the weekend. Our Clinical Director is contactable out of hours should their be an urgent issue. Any issues/complaints being reported are fully investigated and a report produced. This is then fed back to both parties involved in the complaint with the outcome. Candidates are provided with support via supervision and/or training updates when required. We have company policies and guidance notes which are shared with candidates and a programme of mandatory training which is completed by all candidates and updated on a regular basis. This is monitored via our inhouse compliance audits. |
| Please note anything else that you feel may be applicable to report. | Nothing currently but we keep our policies under review. |
Contact Information
If you would like more information, please contact:
Amanda Pimm
The Social Care Community Partnership, Trading as The Nursing Partnership
9 Straiton Business Park, Straiton View, Loanhead, EH20 9QZ
Email: apimm@thenursingpartnership.co.uk
Phone: 0131 202 9933
