Health and safety are a vital priority in all health and social care practice and this unit gives students an understanding of key principles that underpin work in the sector. On completing this unit, students will understand how to minimise risks to all individuals in healthcare settings, be they service users, their friends and family, or employees in the setting. At the end of the unit, students should be able to foresee potential hazards and know how to make appropriate responses to minimise risks, in the context of relevant legal and local policy requirements.

Students will investigate potential hazards for individuals in healthcare settings. Informal observations, particularly during work placements, of how care workers implement safe practice with different service user groups in different environments would be useful background research.

Students will explore the nature of incidents and emergencies that may arise in healthcare settings and possible responses to these. This could then lead to more focused consideration of the risks arising from a specific incident from a case study, the media or actual experience, and an analysis of the factors that caused the incident or emergency and recommendations of how the risk could have been minimised.