GEN63 Act within the limits of your competence and authority

Overview

This standard covers recognising the boundaries of your role and responsibilities and working within your level of competence in accordance with legislation, protocols and guidelines. It is applicable for all staff. Users of this standard will need to ensure that practice reflects up to date information and policies. Version No 1

Knowledge and Understanding

You will need to know and understand:

1. The boundaries of your role and responsibilities and those of your colleagues
2. The reasons for working within the limits of your competence and authority
3. The importance of personally promoting and demonstrating good practice
4. The legislation, protocols and guidelines effecting your work
5. The organisational systems and requirements relevant to your role
6. The sources of information that can be accessed to maintain an awareness of research and developments in your area of work
7. The difference between direct and indirect supervision and autonomous practice, and which combination is most applicable in different circumstances
8. The risks to quality and safety arising from:
   1. working outside the boundaries of competence and authority
   2. not keeping up to date with best practice
   3. poor communication
   4. insufficient support
   5. lack of resources
   6. poor individual or team compliance with legislation, protocols, and guidelines and/or organisational systems and requirements
9. Reporting and minimising risks
10. The principle of meeting the organisations needs, and how this should enable you to recognise your own limitations and when you should seek support from others
11. The processes by which improvements to protocols/guidelines and organisational systems/requirements should be reported
12. The procedure for accessing training, learning and development needs for yourself and/or others within your organisation
13. The actions that can be taken to ensure a current, clear and accurate understanding of roles and responsibilities is maintained, and how this affects the way you work as an individual or part of a team

 

Performance Criteria

You must be able to do the following:

1. adhere to legislation, protocols and guidelines relevant to your role and field of practice
2. work within organisational systems and requirements as appropriate to your role
3. recognise the boundary of your role and responsibility and seek supervision when situations are beyond your competence and authority
4. maintain competence within your role and field of practice
5. use relevant research based protocols and guidelines as evidence to inform your practice
6. promote and demonstrate good practice as an individual and as a team member at all times
7. identify and manage potential and actual risks to the quality and safety of practice
8. evaluate and reflect on the quality of your work and make continuing improvements

 

Additional Information

This National Occupational Standard was developed by Skills for Health. This standard links with the following dimension within the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (October 2004): Dimension: Core 5 Quality This standard replaced EC_30.