Staff Regulation Handbook

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 Table Contents
Introduction and Scope of Application...................................................................................................3
Basic Principles, Rights, and Duties......................................................................................................3
The Regulatory Framework under Which the Center Operates.........................................................4
Legal basis for regulation.....................................................................................................................4
The purpose of regulation....................................................................................................................4
Registration........................................................................................................................................4
Assessing Compliance.....................................................................................................................4
Escalation and Enforcement...........................................................................................................5
The Different Laws and Levels of Policy...............................................................................................5
Legislation..............................................................................................................................................5
Secondary Legislation..........................................................................................................................5
Statutory Instruments.......................................................................................................................6
Statutory Guidance...........................................................................................................................6
Codes of Practice..............................................................................................................................6
Case Law...............................................................................................................................................6
Policies...............................................................................................................................................7
Notable Legal Statutes in Action.............................................................................................................7
Ethical Issues............................................................................................................................................8
Ethical Theories..................................................................................................................................10
Ethical Principles.................................................................................................................................10
Autonomy.........................................................................................................................................10
Beneficence (do good)...................................................................................................................10
Non-maleficence (do no harm)......................................................................................................10
Justice..............................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion...............................................................................................................................................11
References..............................................................................................................................................12

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 Introduction and Scope of Application
The regulations in this handbook shall apply to all individuals employed by the
institution in any capacity that involves delivering health and social care to patients and
other users of our services. The regulation also applies to individuals providing health
and social care services on behalf of the institution, whether on the institution’s
premises or in fieldwork away from the institution. However, the provisions in this
handbook shall not apply to other categories of workers employed by the institution
unless the management determines otherwise. Any appeals and grievances regarding
the application and interpretation of the rules, regulations, and instructions in this
handbook shall be addressed to the Chief of Human Resource Management.
Basic Principles, Rights, and Duties
The healthcare industry and its players are governed by laws, regulations, rules,
and ethical standards. The laws seek to safeguard people when making choices
regarding healthcare. They further stipulate the duties and responsibilities of healthcare
workers. This Staff Regulatory Handbook is based upon ethical and legal principles that
prescribe the rights of healthcare workers and their responsibilities to patients and the
entire healthcare system.
While the government’s laws define legal standards, ethical principles have no
legal foundation. Legal standards’ significance lies in their prescription of what
healthcare workers are allowed or not allowed to do, while ethical values are principally
founded on the human doctrines of right and wrong. Legal standards are enforceable
through statutory institutions, and any act that departs from the stipulation set by the law
is considered illegal. On the other hand, ethical principles do not have a strict regulation.
There are differences in how legal standards and ethical principles function. The
legal provisions only apply within the jurisdiction that legislates and implements them.
Conversely, ethical values are voluntary and based on personal discretion, and thus,
individuals pursue given actions based on their own judgment of right and wrong.
Common legal and ethical issues in MRC Care Homes settings include consent,
confidentiality, safety, and special situations such as those involving human research,
emergencies, personal information, and equality. The laws stipulate what standards of

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the services caregivers must deliver to clients and provide guidelines on handling the
issues mentioned above.
The Regulatory Framework under Which the Center Operates
Legal basis for regulation
Regulation aims to ensure public safety. It establishes professional standards,
regulates activities, and guarantees patients and service users quality care. Health and
social care workers must attain and maintain the appropriate competency to deliver
service to patients and clients. The performance of healthcare services is directly linked
to the quality of the workforce, and it is thus essential to ensure that the professionals
command the capacity to deliver optimal services. Healthcare institutions must meet
specific standards to deliver quality service. Regulation ensures all institutions meet the
stipulated criterion. Last regulation helps prevent and solve disputes between
professionals and their patients during service delivery.
The purpose of regulation
Regulation helps protect vulnerable populations that depend on health and social
care services. It guarantees the public that health center will provide safe and quality
care that meet specified requirements. Regulation achieves these objectives through
three means.
Registration
Health services institutions and professionals must be registered and licensed.
They achieve licensure and registration upon meeting the minimum requirements set by
the law. Designated regulatory and standards agencies and officer ascertain their
qualification and grant the licenses and permits. For instance, care homes must be
registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). As a registered institution, we
must maintain our quality and safety standards by hiring qualified and licensed nurses.
Assessing Compliance
Regulation facilitates monitoring to assess and ascertain compliance with the
existing provisions and adherence to national standards. The regulators gather specific
information on healthcare workers and institutions to facilitate regulatory decision-
making. The collected data also support an ongoing review of the effectiveness of the
existing regulatory framework.

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 Escalation and Enforcement
Monitoring and assessment aim to facilitate improvement. When an institution or
healthcare professionals consistently fail to comply with the prevailing regulatory
requirements and standards, they risk the wellbeing of patients and service users. Thus,
proportionate action is necessary to punish noncompliance. Simple approaches such as
warnings and cautionary action are used to persuade the cited parties to correct their
errors. Subsequent noncompliance results in more stern measures, such as license
revocation, penalties, and legal action.
The Different Laws and Levels of Policy
There are different laws and levels of regulation that shape and coordinate
healthcare service delivery. Differences arise based on how the laws are created and
their role in shaping the healthcare industry. The types include legislation, secondary
legislation, and case law.
Legislation
Legislation or statutes are written laws legally drafted and passed by a legislative
body designed to command or prohibit action. Legislation demands that healthcare
workers perform specific actions in their duty to their patients and prohibits them from
undertaking harmful activities. The legislated laws are also called the Acts of Parliament
because the parliament is the legislative authority that deliberates and passes them
(Legislation.gov.uk., 2020). There is a lengthy process involved from the conception of
possible legislation to the moment it is passed by the parliament and accented into law.
It starts its life as a bill (a proposal for a new law or to change an existing one) that goes
through three stages: introduction in the House of Commons/House of Lords for scrutiny
and optimisation, presentation to the monarch for approval (Royal Assent), and then
becomes law (UK Parliament, 2020a). The sources of bills include individuals or groups
and policies. Once a bill becomes law, it is mandatory for all citizens and enforceable
through sanctions and other approved penalties.
Secondary Legislation
Secondary legislation is also known as statutory instruments or statutory guidance. It
is created by the government’s ministers through the authority assigned to them by the
Acts of Parliament (UK Parliament, 2020b). Since they are a product of delegated

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authority from the parliament, they are considered delegated legislation. Their primary
role is to address gaps in the primary statutes and thus provide executable information
concerning various situations. Examples of secondary legislation include statutory
instruments and codes of practice.
Statutory Instruments
Statutory Instruments (SIs) are regulatory documents written by a government
department to effect adjustments to a law. The instruments provide detailed outlines
and reasons for the change. However, action by the parliament may be necessary to
influence their application. The parliament can approve or reject these instruments but
cannot amend them. SIs are essential when specific actions must be rapidly authorised
and executed.
Statutory Guidance
Statutory guidance is written to provide healthcare workers or organisations with the
information they require to meet the legal obligations stipulated in statutes and
legislation. Healthcare workers and organisations must follow these guidelines unless
they can demonstrate and justify why they cannot do it. Statutory guidance is essential
to give healthcare workers additional contextual details regarding legislation and how to
operate within the prevailing legislative environment. The Care and Support Statutory
Guidance (Department of Health, 2014) is an example of a statutory guidance issue to
provide direction on the application of the Care Act 2014.
Codes of Practice
Codes of practice set out the objective behind the legislation. They draw from the
legislations themselves and judicial interpretation of the statutes through case laws
(Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2011). It proceeds to explain the different
provisions, restrictions, and guarantees of legislation. The elucidation gives healthcare
workers and institutions a practical understanding of the influence of the legislation in
everyday practice. Besides, it supports their comprehension in executing legal
concepts, which is further helpful to the judiciary when deliberating judgment.
Case Law
Case Law is also known as the law of precedent or common law. It is based on
the outcomes from past cases, where judgments made by judges in previous cases are

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used to deliberate and pass judgment in current ones. It establishes a principle or rule
on which to base actions and expect courts and judicial bodies to use when deliberating
later cases with similar facts. Using legal precedents creates stability, predictability,
efficiency, and fairness in law. The precedents or stare decisis have three main
elements: reports, rules and classification (Trevelyan, 2020). The reports element
means satisfactory and reliable reports regarding former decisions must accompany
precedent. The rules element means the precedent embody rules that extract a legal
principle from a previous set of fact and apply it to the prevailing set of facts. Last, the
classification element demands a clear classification of precedents as binding (ratio
decidendi) or persuasive (obiter dicta).
Policies
A policy is a principle or course of action embraced by an individual or an
organisation. It stipulates the rules or guidelines that establish the course of action in
various stipulations (O’Connor, Wilbore, and Grace, 2020). Policies occur at different
levels and can be classified based accordingly: National policy and organisational
policy. Based on their names, national policy dictates the particular direction pursued by
a government, while an organisational policy reveals how an institution is aligned with
the national policy. National policies stipulate the government’s stand on a given issue,
align with national legislation, translate visions and aims into outcomes, and inform law
and reform. Organisation policy gives institutions the course of action to pursue in
relation to national legislation and policies.
Notable Legal Statutes in Action
As a nurse in a care home environment, you must know the statutes governing
your service delivery and duly comply with all provisions. Confidentiality is essential in
healthcare, and care homes must protect their residents’ information. In this regard,
care homes must comply with the Data Protection Act of 1998 requirements. As nurses
and caregivers working in a care home environment, you must take the lead in
protecting the residents’ privacy.
Second, care homes must provide care to all residents without discriminating
against them using any discriminatory criteria. The Equality Act of 2010 prohibits all acts
of discrimination toward resident based on their characteristics. Therefore, workers in

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the care home environment must not habour any sentiments that might encourage
discriminatory acts.
A caregiver has unique responsibilities towards the residents in care homes. The
Health and Social Care Act of 2008 elaborately stipulates the roles and responsibilities
of caregivers in care homes. They must ensure that they provide appropriate treatment
that meets the needs and personal preferences of the recipient. The provider cannot
offer care against the recipients’ consent, irrespective of whether the care meets the
patient’s needs. In situations where a recipient lacks the mental capacity to make critical
decisions, the care provider must act according to the Mental Health Act 1983 and
Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Personal care providers must involve their clients and any other party
responsible for the client in the assessment processes. Again, consent is critical; the
providers must only perform the assessments to the extent the client consents.
Similarly, involving another party, such as the elderly’s family member, may only be
done to the extent the patients are comfortable with. In addition, the assessment must
consider all regulatory provisions regarding assessment and current evidence-based
practice. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 guides all assessments involving clients with
challenged mental capacity.
In instances that involve partnerships or multidisciplinary teams, sharing of
information is critical. However, the information exchange must be done in a way that
protects the patient’s privacy based on the Data Protection Act of 1998. Only relevant
members of the teams should have access to this information.
Care providers must enable and support patients or their families to understand
various treatment and care choices. They should enable them to discuss the options
with competent professionals to under the risks and benefits of each alternative to make
informed decisions. Caregivers must support the service users to continuously discuss
treatment choices and support any changes they wish to make. The service users must
also be informed of the risks and benefits of such a change.
Ethical Issues
Legal and ethical issues are similar as well as different. Ethical issues mostly
involve issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and patient-practitioner

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relationships. Ethical principles approach to these issues is different from the legal
approach.
Ethics embody the concept of good and right. Good denotes what one should
aim to achieve, while right embodies a juridical framework by which we justify action.
Ethical issues are moral dilemmas that one must consider by acting or deciding.
Healthcare workers must embrace the four ethical principles in practice (Amer, 2019).
The principles are autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice.
Healthcare workers frequently encounter challenging situations with no easy or
correct answer but must make and justify their decisions. The Nursing and Midwifery
Council (NMC) Code can provide a reliable guide and is thus a “code of ethics,” a set of
critical principles to support and direct nurses (NMC 2015). A code of ethics outlines the
essential ethical doctrines that govern our practice’s decision-making. Situations that
lead to ethical dilemmas include respecting others, treating others fairly and with dignity,
and supporting patients’ choices. These situations lead to ethical issues such as
confidentiality, consent, relationship, safeguarding, and end-of-life, which also have
legal implications.
Ethics and law are intricately intertwined. Ethics embody philosophical tests for
morality and concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, which inform socially
acceptable behaviours (Jackson, 2015). Law entails a system of rules enforced by a set
of institutions. Although the two inform each other, what I legally accepted may not be
morally right, and similarly, something may be ethically acceptable but prohibited.
Law and ethics are connected through standards, behaviours, and rules.
Standards concern the quality level expected from healthcare workers or institutions.
Both law and ethics seek to stipulate the quality of healthcare services that consumers
are entitled to. Behaviours embody healthcare workers’ comportment and actions
toward their profession, patients, and organisation. Law and ethics stipulate suitable
and unsuitable behavior (Jackson, 2015). Law goes ahead to sanction and prohibit
certain behaviours. Rules are sets of principles that guide or control actions and
comportments. They demarcate right and wrong and serve as societal norms. Social
rules provide ethics and define ethical practice and can become law when formalised.
When incorporated into law, they become binding for everyone.

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Ethical Theories
To exercise ethical practice, healthcare workers must be conversant with ethical
theories stipulating how one can approach different situations. Various scenarios
present unique dynamics that require critical thinking to identify the parameters one can
apply to a predicament. The four ethical theories present four ways of approaching
ethical scenarios.
i. Consequentialism: what are the consequences of pursuing a particular
approach?
ii. Deontology: What rules do you use to make decisions?
iii. Virtue ethics: What is good for one to do?
iv. Principles: Does the decision adhere to the 4 principles?
The ethical theory’s applicability to law demonstrates statutes’ dependency on
ethics. From a consequentialist perspective, laws such as the Care Act 2014 aim to
reduce harm and increase gains. In application De-ontological and princpalism
application, laws must follow the specific principle and emphasise duty, such as duty of
care. From a virtue perspective, laws such as the Mental Capacity Act 2005 enormously
influence our conduct towards art-risk clients.
Ethical Principles
Autonomy
Autonomy embodies respect for other people’s right to make their own decisions.
Healthcare workers must facilitate patients to make their own choices by providing
adequate information. Therefore, “informed consent” is a primary product of this
principle.
Beneficence (do good)
Healthcare worker actions seek to ‘benefit’ healthcare service users, for instance,
by creating comfort, enhancing wellbeing, increasing quality of life, and boosting their
potential. Nurses must, therefore, create a safe and supportive environment.
Non-maleficence (do no harm)
In the exercise of non-maleficence, healthcare workers must not cause pain and
suffering, incapacitate, commit an offense, cause pain and suffering, or deprive others.

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 Justice
Applying the justice principle entails treating others fairly, not favouring certain
groups or individuals over others, and acting in a non-discriminatory and non-prejudicial
way.
Conclusion
Law and ethics influence and shape healthcare and the activities of practitioners
in their daily delivery of services to patients. They stipulate the responsibilities and
duties the caregivers have toward patients. As a result, the ethics and law safeguard the
wellbeing of patients and other healthcare service users. Our institution’s policy is to
provide our clients with high-quality healthcare services. We uphold the patients’ right to
quality healthcare and protect our patient rights. To achieve this objective, our
organisational policy is to adhere to the provision of all laws and ethical values, national
policies, and professional standards.

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 References
Amer, A. B. 2019, ‘The Health Care Ethics: Overview of the Basics’, Open Journal of
Nursing 09, 183-187.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331278562_The_Health_Care_Ethics_
Overview_of_the_Basics
Department of Health. 2014, Care and Support Statutory Guidance: Issued under the
Care Act 2014, [online] Available at:
<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/315993/Care-Act-Guidance.pdf> [Accessed October 27,
2023]
Equality and Human Rights Commission. 2011, Equality Act codes of practice. [online]
Available at:
<https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/equality-act-
codes-practice> [Accessed October 27, 2023]
Jackson, E. 2015, ‘The relationship between medical law and good medical
ethics’, Journal of Medical Ethics. 41, 95-98. https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/1/95
Legislation.gov.uk., 2020, Understanding Legislation, [online] Available at:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/understanding-legislation>[Accessed 18 January
2020].
Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). 2015, The Code: Professional Standards of
Practice and Behaviour for Nurses, Midwives and Nursing Associates. NMC.,
[online] <https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/
nmc-code.pdf> [Accessed October 27, 2023]
O’Connor, R., Wilbore, B. and Grace, M. 2020, An Introduction To Policy In The UK,
[online] https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/An-
introduction-to-policymaking-in-the-UK.pdf>[Accessed 18 January 2020].
Trevelyan, L. 2020, Precedents: What are they and when are they used? - InBrief.co.uk.
[online] Available at:
<https://www.inbrief.co.uk/legal-system/precedents/>[Accessed 18 January
2020]

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UK Parliament. 2020a, Bills & legislation - UK Parliament, [online] Available at:
<https://www.parliament.uk/business/bills-and-legislation/> [Accessed 18
January 2020].
UK Parliament., 2020b, Secondary Legislation- UK Parliament, [online] Available at:
<https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/secondary-legislation/>[Accessed 18
January 2020].

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