Standard 5 of 7 · 12 min
Standard 5: Clinical care
What this standard is about
Standard 5 covers safe, quality clinical care: noticing when something changes, escalating it appropriately, and working within your own scope of practice and organisational procedures.
Key ideas
- Safe and quality clinical care starts with everyone playing their part, clinical and non-clinical.
- Recognising deterioration or a change from someone's baseline, even a small one.
- Escalating promptly through the right channel when something changes.
- Clear, timely documentation of what was observed.
- General awareness of medication safety, at an educational level only.
- Infection prevention as part of everyday clinical care.
- Clear clinical communication between everyone involved.
- Working within your own scope of practice, and knowing when something is outside it.
- Supervision and professional responsibilities, and following organisational and professional procedures.
Practical workplace examples
- Noticing someone is unusually drowsy or withdrawn compared with their normal self, and reporting it rather than waiting to see.
- Passing on a clinical observation clearly and promptly at handover.
- Never adjusting or withholding medication yourself, even with good intentions.
- Asking a supervisor when a task feels outside what you're trained or authorised to do.
Video
Video coming soon
A short explainer on noticing and escalating a change from someone's usual self, with a reminder about scope of practice.
Transcript
This video is in production. Read the script below instead — it will become the video's caption and transcript once the video is added.
Clinical care safety often starts with noticing something is different, not with a diagnosis. You don't need to know what's wrong to recognise that something has changed and to say so.
Escalation is not a last resort. Raising a concern promptly, through your organisation's process, is exactly what good clinical care looks like in practice.
This lesson is general education only. It cannot replace your clinical training, supervision or your organisation's own procedures, and it will never ask you to diagnose, treat or make medication decisions.
Scenario
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Try it in practice
Check that you know exactly how and to whom you report a clinical concern in your workplace, before you're in a situation where you need to.
Reflect
This goes into your downloadable action plan. It is private to you and is not marked.
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