Right-touch assurance: a methodology for assessing and assuring occupational risk of harm

Assessing risk

The Authority has developed a new tool for assessing the risk of harm presented by different health and care occupations. This tool is available to indicate what form of assurance is needed to manage the risk of harm to patients and service users arising from the practice of an occupation.

The methodology

This paper sets out how the model will operate. As health and care needs drive the development of new roles within the health service, discussion remains about how safety and quality are most appropriately and cost-effectively assured. This approach will assist government in making objective and transparent decisions on whether new roles should be regulated or what alternative action should be taken. It will also ensure that any action taken is clearly focused on managing potential for harm to patients and service users.

This approach has been developed for the purpose of assessing new and unregulated occupations to determine what type of oversight would be appropriate to manage risk of harm. In the long term, the methodology could be used or adapted to aid decisions on whether or not specialties should be regulated, if there should be other types of annotations on the register, as well as reviewing provisional and student registration, however this is outside the scope of this piece of work.