What you have learned in Section 4

• Caring for patients brings important legal responsibilities, called your ‘duty of care’.
• Being accountable means that you have to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions and behaviour.
• You have a responsibility to report your concerns.
• If a patient complains about their care or support it is important that it is followed up quickly and in a positive way.
• Incidents, accidents and near misses in the workplace must be recorded.
• It is important for healthcare workers to recognise people’s cultural, religious and other preferences, but equally important that they try to avoid making assumptions based on stereotypes rather than knowledge of the individual.
• Safeguarding adults and children is everyone’s business.