HSC301 Introduction to Health and Social Care Assignment Sample

 HSC301 Introduction to Health and Social Care Assignment

(Briefly explain the context/background and what you will discuss in assignment)

Social and Health care is termed to a complex network policies, networks and relationship among multiple social and healthcare settings. It emphasises in the multifunctional aspect of offering treatment and effective care services with the compliance of legal rules and regulations. This assignment identifies roles of care professionals within social and health care sector along with addressing of poor practise mechanism within sector. In addition, importance of regulatory bodies in delivering in effective and standard care is discussed. At last, this assignment analyses the role of inter-professional teams and highlights the key difference between multidisciplinary and inter-professional teams of healthcare with the evaluation of potential barriers to team working.

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Task 1: The Main Roles and Responsibilities of Health and Social Care Workers When Delivering Care

AC 1.1 Roles and Responsibilities of Health and Social Care professionals

Health and social care professionals comprises of Doctors, nurses, midwives and carers plays a vital role in delivering standard care services and support to individuals across multiple care settings (Moudatsou et al, 2020). Responsibilities of care professionals are based on their qualifications, roles and upon the nature of care.

• Promoting anti-discriminatory practices

The primary responsibility of NHS care professionals is to promote anti-discriminatory practices by empowering the patients with equality and autonomy within process of decision making. Regardless of disabilities, family, age, status, sexuality, gender, cognitive abilities or cultural factors, patients have the right to access equal and unique social and health care services as per the patient’s requirement. Moreover, NHS Care professionals are responsible for the promotion of offering person-centred care to ensure the standard care services to its patients (Gov.UK, 2024). Person-centred care ensures high autonomy to patient, leads to formulate well-informed decision related to their wellbeing and treatment. These care professional plays a significant role in delivering comprehensive care to its patients, aims to enhance individual’s quality life.

• Encourage independence and Empowering Individuals

In addition to that, NHS’s social and health care professionals plays a vital role in encouraging independence within patients by offering them choices related to healthy lifestyle (Aveyard, 2023). These choices are related to foster a sense of care and belongingness, positive relationship with each other. Moreover, it is based in the promotion of active involvement in decision making process through autonomy. Besides that, care professionals are responsible for encouraging practise of independence within community groups through active engagement and increased contribution within community. This practise boosts connectivity, empowering individuals and foster positive relations among people, is beneficial for marinating social health of the public. For instance: NHS, a public health care system in UK has a primary responsibility to facilitate support to the public and guide them to maintain social care by addressing social determinants to health (NHS UK, 2024). 

AC 1.2 Reporting Poor Practice

Reporting of inadequate and poor practises by social and health care professionals is termed as a critical responsibility, leads to ensure wellbeing, rights and safety of individuals in accessing quality care (Hujala and Laihonen, 2021). NHS professionals are obliged to report poor practices instances, aimed to uphold legal and ethical standards, protect vulnerable individuals and maintain standards quality of care. Recognition and prevention of poor healthcare practices are critical within NHS to accomplish it objective related to delivering standard care and promotion of health and wellbeing of an individual. Poor hygiene, maltreatment and negligence are the key examples of poor healthcare practices. These practices are seen as obstacles in effective care services. Neglecting of proper hygiene is often perceived as unsanitary or unclean (Nikunlaakso et al, 2022). It is considered as socially disrespectful and unacceptable as it possesses high risk to community health. In addition, poor hygiene results in social rejection and leads to low self-esteem and confidence and often leads to social bullying, has an adverse impact on social health.

Apart from that, poor practice of maltreatment includes all type of emotional and physical ill-treatment such as exploitation and sexual, verbal or emotional abuse, Financial or domestic abuse leads to lead to harm physical and mental health of the individual. It was reported that estimated 25.1% of the NHS staff experienced the incidents of abuse, harassment or bullying in past 12 months (NHS, 2024). Another poor practice is related to negligence, refers to the improper execution of medical procedure during treatment and leads to endanger safety or life of the patient. Medical negligence could be done in number of ways such as surgical mistakes, incorrect treatment and misdiagnosis. It was reported that in 2024, there was 13833 new medical negligence claims in the UK, a decrease of 4% as compare to 2023 among which 6573 claims were settle without payment of damages and 7260 were closed with the payment of damages.

If social or health care professionals are caught with engaging in poor health practices related toe negligence, other care workers are legally, professionally or ethically compelled to report to their healthcare manager (Ocloo et al, 2021). This can be accomplished by way of notifying to a senior colleague and healthcare manager for immediate observations and best possible adjustments for the mitigation of poor healthcare practices. If no action could be taken for the mitigation of negligence or the inadequate response, in that case, concerns should be forwarded to the NHS senior management for adequate rectification of poor practices.

Task 2: The importance of regulatory bodies in delivery of high quality care

AC 2.1 Role of Regulatory Bodies

Regulatory bodies played a crucial role in foresting positive environment within social and health care system, characterised by ethical practices, patient’s safety and standard care (Ehrlich et al, 2020). Their role comprises of establishment of regulations and standards, their enforcements and continuous monitoring to uphold principles of safety, accountability and quality within NHS. The social and health care provisions comprise of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Care Quality Commission (CQC) were carried out by mostly healthcare entities, especially NHS.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC)

It is termed as social and health care regulator within England. The primary role of CQC is to ensure the effective, high-quality, safe and compassionate services to patients by the social care and health care providers (Care Quality Commission, 2024). It was established under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. CQC plays a significant role in delivering safety and effective health and social care services with establishment of standards, monitoring with conducting inspections, assign ratings and taking actions related to implement when required. It involves the social and health care professionals and service users and aims to promote continuous improvement and transparency within NHS.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

It is an executive agency within department of social and health in the UK (Gov.UK, 2024). It was established in 2003. The primary role of MHRA is to maintain the effectiveness and standard quality of care services, includes medical devices and rigorous medical regulation with sector of health and social care. MHRA engages in the establishment ad enforcement of health care standards, conducts activities of monitoring of standards and effectively collaboration with the stakeholders. This results in increased contribution within the sector of social and health care, leads to maintenance of overall safety, quality and effectives of care services within NHS and across the United Kingdom (Teisberg et al, 2020).

AC 2.2 Bodies regulating the professions

Professional bodies within social and healthcare plays a pivotal role in promotion of standard care and encourages the sector towards continuous education, development and training along with the maintenance of professional competencies.

Health Education England

It is a national organization for training and education to workforce along with their development within the sector of social and health care (Sheikh et al, 2021). It was established in June, 2012. Its primary function is to foster coordination and leadership to accomplish the purpose of development and training of workforce. It operates with NHS England to divide responsibilities for the strategic planning of workforce in clear and easier manner. Moreover, this professional body formulates strategy for workforce to meet their present and future needs along with the accomplishment of objective of NHS that is to deliver effective care services. It was resulted that over 5500 nursing associates of NHS worked within the long term workforce plan (NHS England, 2024).

Royal College of Physician of Edinburgh

On the other hand, this independent and professional organization of membership and standard setting body aims to formulate provisions to modernize and simplify the regulatory health care law (Duffy, 2022). Its function is to establish a transparent, responsive and streamlined system for the effective regulations within the social and health care professionals. Its mission is to fulfil the educational and professional needs of doctors and other care professionals and promotes public health and clinical standards. This professional commission focuses to influence and guide health policy and represent its significance within NHS. At this professional organization, there are strong international and UK presence with across 14000 fellow members within 91 nations, covers across 56 medical and professional specialists within sector of social and health care (Royal College of Physician of Edinburgh, 2024).

Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)

This professional body is termed as a professional council of health and acts as a statutory regulator with over 280000 care professionals within the United Kingdom. The key purpose of this council is to protect public (Health and Care Professions Council, 2024). In addition, it aims to formulate and maintain proficiency standards and formulates the rules and regulation based on professional conduct of the social and health care professionals of NHS. It regulates the key functions, comprises of approving training and education programmes along with monitoring and publishing register of care professionals in order to maintain the practice standards and professional requirements (Schot et al, 2020).

Task 3: Role of the inter- professional team in delivering Health and Social care

AC 3.1 roles and responsibilities of the inter-professional team in meeting care needs in the case study

The inter-professional teams played multiple responsibilities and roles related to fostering sustainable support, screening physical and social needs and responsible for delivering effective and standard care (Ehrlich et al, 2020). It involves multiple disciplines of communication and team working among nurses, doctors, therapists, pharmacists and other care providers of NHS to deliver effective and standard care to the patient. These inter-professional teams utilizes to secure connected platforms with other care professional and employ the principles based on the theory on crisis intervention to accomplish the needs of effective care services. Moreover, it played a pivotal role in providing person-centred care for the promotion of better health and wellbeing of the individual. The inter-professional team of NHS is responsible for the delivery of quality care along with ensuring equality, safety and dignity of the patient (Wei et al, 2020). This team focuses on the patient’s engagement and inclusion, aims to encourage participation of inert-professional teams. Besides that, the inter-professional teams outline the processes and roles of the care professionals to meet care needs. These teams engage in personal coordination, inter-professional communication and collaboration within the weekly care related conferences to improve collective competence within team members.

AC 3.2: Discuss the difference between multi- disciplinary and inter-professional team working

The terms multidisciplinary and inter-professional are varied in nature as inter-professional team includes teamwork and collaboration among care professionals (Teisberg et al, 2020). These teams are based on different disciplines as per their contextual determinants and cultural conditions to shape effective team working within NHS. On the contrary, multidisciplinary teams refer to care professionals among diverse expertise areas working together, whereas inter-professional teams refers to the care professionals with different disciplines working as a team. Another difference is based on the approach; the multidisciplinary team draws a systematic knowledge gathered from multiple disciplines but stays within its professional limits (Sheikh et al, 2021). Whereas, the inter-professional team working harmonizes, synthesizes and analyses link among disciples into a coherent and coordinated manner to ensure team working and smooth coordination within NHS.

The multidisciplinary team of NHS focus on the core care function of patients from different medical disciplines but recognizes its own disciplines in well manner (Duffy, 2022). On the other hand, the inter-professional teams focuses on the competencies and training of other disciplines and is able to enhance its unique contribution and aims to articulate effective care services without any overlapping of roles and responsibilities of NHS care professionals. Another key fundamental difference is possesses within the collaborative care plan as it only formulated by the inter-professional teams on the intervention of patient. On contrast, the multidisciplinary teams are not emphasised on this integrated care approach and develops its own cohesive plan of care as per their own expertise to accomplish care goals (Schot et al, 2020).

AC 3.3: Discuss the potential barriers to team working and how they could be overcome.

There are multiple potential barriers in context of team working among multi- disciplinary and inter-professional teams of NHS (Ehrlich et al, 2020). Lack of trust, Poor leadership, ineffective communication and unclear goals are the common team working barriers faced by the NHS due to which its efficiency and quality acre is affected in adverse manner.

• Lack of Trust: due to lack of faith or trust on the team members, the inter-professional teams of NHS lead to disengaged and face complexities in working as a team. Further, there care efficiency is adversely affected due to which the inter-professional care team are unable to achiever their common or individual goals related to deliver quality care (Wei et al, 2020). This can be overcome with foster positive environment within NHS and encourage team members for open communication to build trust for each other.
• Poor leadership: another barrier within inter-professional team working of NHS is poor leadership as a result of which team members have low morale and confidence, leads to resistance of team workers. Moreover, it leads to disorganisations of care functions and ineffective teamwork among multidisciplinary and inter-professional teams of NHS (Moudatsou et al, 2020). This can be overcome with the adoption of effective leadership skills and by encouraging constructive feedback from the team members.
• Ineffective communication: there are numerous reasons behind ineffective communication, such as lack of context, misinterpretation, unclear messaging or lack of mutual understanding. This leads to decreased care quality and efficiency, damaged relationship among care team members and hindered the process of person-centred care (Aveyard, 2023). This can be overcome with the promotion of communication policies, adoption of techniques related to active listening and with the establishment of clear channels of communication within team members of NHS.
• Unclear goals: This barrier is arises due to ineffective leadership among multidisciplinary and inter-professional teams of NHS, results in lack of focus and direction of the care team members. Unclear goals lead to frustration, confusion and minimize the effectiveness of care provided by the multidisciplinary and inter-professional teams (Hujala and Laihonen, 2021). This barrier can be mitigated with the establishment of clear roles and responsibilities among team members, leads to streamlining of care activities and collaborative team performance towards the achievement of objective of NHS.

Conclusions

Provide the outcome of discussion of whole assignment

From the above assignment, it was concluded that social and Health care comprised of complex network policies, relationship and networks among various social and healthcare settings. It was focused on multifunctional aspect of delivering treatment and standard care services with the compliance of ethical and legal regulations and rules. Care professionals played a vital role in the promotion of anti-discriminatory practices, person-centred care and encourages independence within social and health care sector along with addressing of poor practise mechanism related to negligence. In addition, this assignment concludes about importance of regulatory bodies such as CQC and MHRA in delivering in effective and standard care. At last, multiple responsibilities and roles such as delivering sustainable support, screening of social and physical needs and responsible for delivering effective and standard care with effective communication and collaborations skills were concluded.

Bibliography

Provide list of references in Harvard Style.

Books and Journals

• Aveyard, H., 2023. Doing a Literature Review in Health and Social Care: A Practical Guide 5e.
• Duffy, J.R., 2022. Quality caring in nursing and health systems: Implications for clinicians, educators, and leaders. Springer Publishing Company.
• Ehrlich, C., Slattery, M., Vilic, G., Chester, P. and Crompton, D., 2020. What happens when peer support workers are introduced as members of community-based clinical mental health service delivery teams: a qualitative study. Journal of interprofessional care.
• Hujala, T. and Laihonen, H., 2021. Effects of knowledge management on the management of health and social care: a systematic literature review. Journal of Knowledge Management, 25(11), pp.203-221.
• Moudatsou, M., Stavropoulou, A., Philalithis, A. and Koukouli, S., 2020, January. The role of empathy in health and social care professionals. In Healthcare (Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 26). MDPI.
• Nikunlaakso, R., Selander, K., Oksanen, T. and Laitinen, J., 2022. Interventions to reduce the risk of mental health problems in health and social care workplaces: A scoping review. Journal of psychiatric research, 152, pp.57-69.
• Ocloo, J., Garfield, S., Franklin, B.D. and Dawson, S., 2021. Exploring the theory, barriers and enablers for patient and public involvement across health, social care and patient safety: a systematic review of reviews. Health research policy and systems, 19, pp.1-21.
• Schot, E., Tummers, L. and Noordegraaf, M., 2020. Working on working together. A systematic review on how healthcare professionals contribute to interprofessional collaboration. Journal of interprofessional care, 34(3), pp.332-342.
• Sheikh, A., Anderson, M., Albala, S., Casadei, B., Franklin, B.D., Richards, M., Taylor, D., Tibble, H. and Mossialos, E., 2021. Health information technology and digital innovation for national learning health and care systems. The Lancet Digital Health, 3(6), pp.e383-e396.
• Teisberg, E., Wallace, S. and O’Hara, S., 2020. Defining and implementing value-based health care: a strategic framework. Academic Medicine, 95(5), pp.682-685.
• Wei, H., Corbett, R.W., Ray, J. and Wei, T.L., 2020. A culture of caring: the essence of healthcare interprofessional collaboration. Journal of interprofessional care, 34(3), pp.324-331.

Online

• Care Quality Commission, (2024). We're CQC, the independent regulator of health and social care in England. Online. Available through: <https://www.cqc.org.uk/>. 
• Gov.UK, (2024). Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Online. Available through: <https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/medicines-and-healthcare-products-regulatory-agency>. 
• Gov.UK, (2024). The NHS’s role in the public’s health: A report from the NHS Future Forum. Online. Available through: <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c9c8aed915d12ab4bbf41/dh_132114.pdf>.
• Health and Care Professions Council, (2024). Regulating health and care professionals. Online. Available through: <https://www.hcpc-uk.org/>. 
• NHS England, (2024). workforce, Training and Education. Online. Available through: <https://www.hee.nhs.uk/>.
• NHS UK, (2024). Social care and support guide. Online. Available through: <https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/social-care-and-support-guide/>. 
• NHS, (2024). Violence prevention and reduction. Online. Available through: <https://www.england.nhs.uk/supporting-our-nhs-people/health-and-wellbeing-programmes/violence-prevention-and-safety/>.
• Royal College of Physician of Edinburgh, (2024). Regulation of health and social care professionals in England. Online. Available through: <https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/regulation-health-and-social-care-professionals>.

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