What qualifications do you need to carry out a risk assessment?
Posted on 21st September 2022
Assessing risk has become essential for anyone in the care industry to establish and prioritise risk areas. It is a primary management tool to ensure the health and safety of staff and service users. A risk assessment is a comprehensive methodology for highlighting potential harm, the likelihood of that harm occurring and how to minimise this risk.
The person who performs a risk assessment is called a risk assessor. Situations like medication, using moving & handling equipment, cleaning, and other potentially hazardous activities that can happen in a care setting. A risk assessment proactively works to prevent the identified hazards from happening.
Additional risk assessment training can help you and your staff create an appropriate risk assessment. This blog will help you understand what risk assessment is, the qualifications to perform a risk assessment and the responsibilities of a risk assessor.
What is risk assessment?
It is a systematic approach to identifying potential hazards and evaluating any risk which can endanger service user’s, staff's or visitors' health and safety. The purpose of a risk assessment is to implement control measures to decrease or remove the risks.
Steps to carry out a risk assessment
The following are the important steps of conducting a risk assessment.
Find the hazards that may cause harm.
Identify who may be injured or harmed and how.
Evaluate the probability of that harm occurring.
Create suitable control measures to remove or minimise the risk.
Review the risk assessment and create a review schedule.
Types of risk assessment
Risk assessments carried out in a healthcare setting should be relevant to the daily activities of the service user’s they support. Following are the kinds of risk assessment include:
Condition specific risk assessments, such as diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy.
Activity specific risk assessments, such as day trips, personal care, self-administration of medication.
Site-specific, these include fire, flood, gas-leak risk assessments. These are usually created prior to CQC authorising the opening of a service as it is detailed in the Business Continuity Plan.
Are you competent enough to perform a risk assessment
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) state that a person must be competent in order to undertake a risk assessment; but what does competent mean? The HSE state that: ‘A competent person is someone who has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities that allow them to assist you properly. The level of competence required will depend on the complexity of the situation and the particular help you need.’
This means a competent person could be a senior carer, a nurse, or the home manager. Depending on their level of knowledge, skill, experience and training.
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