Legislation and Codes of Practice for Handling Information in Care Settings

Unit 2 PROMOTE EFFECTIVE HANDLING OF INFORMATION IN CARE SETTINGS
Assessment Criteria
1.1
Question: Identify legislation and codes of practice that relate to handling information in care
settings
Answer: Legislations plays an important role in terms of facilitating effectiveness of clinical practices
as well as enhance patient experience. It includes the criterion of providing effective measures and
reduce chance of occurring drug errors in healthcare organisations (Edelman, Mandle and Kudzma,
2017). However, staff members should follow legislations and codes of practices at the time of
handling information related patient in which some of elements are mentioned below.
The key legislations
 Health and Social Care Act 2012
 Data Protection Act
 Equality Act
 Access to Health Records Act 1990
 Care Act 2014
Codes of practices
 The personal information must be processed in fair and lawful way.
 It is required that patient data must be only processed for limited purposes.
 The personal data related to service users must be relevant, adequate and not excessive.
 The information of patient should be accurate ass well as up to date compulsorily (Schmidt
and et. al., 2016).
 It is required that data of patients must not be kept for a longer than it is necessary to do so.
 The personal information of services users must be processed in a line along with the data
subjects' rights.
 The data related to patients must be safe and secure.
 It is required that personal data must not be transferred to another nations without having
an adequate protection and purpose.
 It is necessary for nursing staff confidential information related to patients or services users
is required to be treated in confidential as well as respectful manner.

 It is needed that team members of healthcare team should only share confidential
information for a valid reason regarding secure and care of a person (Altilio and et. al.,
2019).
 It is observed that patient related data which is shared in regards to benefit of an entire
community should be anonymised accordingly.
 A person has a right to put an objection in context of sharing of confidential information
about should be always respected by medical staff.
 It is very important for every healthcare organisation to establish effective policies,
strategies, regulation, procedures and systems at work place to make sure about the
confidentiality rules are followed properly.
1.2
Question: Summarise the main points of legal requirements and codes of practice for handling
information in care settings
Answer: The legal requirements for handling information in care settings are essential in terms of
maintaining confidentiality. It is important to maintain privacy of personal information because of
the fact that a small medical issue can create a major societal problem for an individual due to which
they may suffer for their entire life. Meanwhile, legislations are required to be prepared and applied
on healthcare sector so that any of staff or other person cannot misuse the personal information of a
patient. The main points of legal requirement for information handling in care settings is mentioned
here.
 It includes the criterion of protecting services users from any harm and preserving the
desired rights.
 The legislations are required in proper data storage to make them accurate and liable for
using in various medical researches.
 It is required to secure the interests of patient regarding their health problems.
 The maintenance of safety of patient data is required because it may permits complex
activities at societal level.
 The sharing of patient information may impact on emotional, social and psychological state
of an individual which affect the entire health condition of the.
Legislations are required specially to provide strong protection regarding ethnic background,
political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, genetics, biometrics, health and sex life
or orientation and race.
Codes of practices are required for handling information in care settings is needed to make
nursing staff capable for proper recording, processing & storage of the same. It is necessary to
provide correct direction to medical employees for proper handing and avoiding the relevant
mistakes. However, accurate sharing is essential because decision making of treatment is based on