Assignment front sheet:
Qualification Unit number and title
Pearson BTEC Level 4 HNC/D Diploma in Health and Social Care Unit 1: Communications in Health and Social Care Organisations
Student name
Assignment title Communications in Health and Social Care Organisations
Learning Outcome
Learning outcome Assessment Criteria In this assessment you will have the opportunity to present evidence that shows you are able to: Task no.
Evidence
(Page no)
LO1
Be able to explore how communication skills are used in health and social care 1.1 Apply relevant theories of communication to health and social care contexts
1.2 Use communication skills in a health and social care context
1.3 Review methods of dealing with inappropriate interpersonal communication between individuals in health and social care settings
1.4 Analyse the use of strategies to support users of health and social care services with specific communication needs
LO2 Understand how various factors influence the communication process in health and social care 2.1 Explain how the communication process is influenced by values and cultural factors
2.2 Explain how legislation, charters and codes of practice impact on the communication process in health and social care
2.3 Analyse the effectiveness of organizational systems and policies in promoting good practice in communication
2.4 Suggest ways of improving the communication process in health and social care setting
LO3 Be able to explore the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in health and social care 3.1 Access and use standard ICT software packages to support work in health and social care
3.2 Analyse the benefits of using ICT in health and social care for users of services, care workers and care organizations
3.3 Analyse how legal considerations in the use of ICT impact on health and social care
Learner declaration
I certify that the work submitted for this assignment is my own and research sources are fully acknowledged.
Student signature: Date:
In addition to the above PASS criteria, this assignment gives you the opportunity to submit evidence in order to achieve the following MERIT and DISTINCTION grades
Grade Descriptor
Indicative characteristic/s (one indicative characteristic per grade descriptor is required)
Contextualisation
M1 Identify and apply strategies to find appropriate solutions Effective judgements have been made
To achieve M1 you will make effective judgements in your report about the effectiveness of organisational systems and policies in promoting good practice in communication (Task 2)
M2 Select/design and apply appropriate methods/techniques Relevant theories and techniques have been applied
To achieve M2 you will have applied theoretical content related to the communication cycle, barriers to communication and psychological factors in a way helps clarify the causes and the implications of the incident. (Task 2)
M3 Present and communicate appropriate findings The appropriate structure and approach has been used
To achieve M3 your report must be structured in a clear, logical and sequenced way following the guidelines laid out for a report, and also flowing with consistent ease from one topic to the next. (Task 2)
D1 Use critical reflection to evaluate own work and justify valid conclusions Self-criticism of approach has taken place
To achieve D1 you need to use a reflective model to carry out a critical review of your performance in the report Task 1 and role play in Task 3 and arrived at sound conclusions (Task 4)
D2 Take responsibility for managing and organizing activities Activities have been managed
To achieve D2 you will have demonstrated how you have managed the group work preparation of your role play activities. This will involve creating a plan, taking detailed notes of your group work progress and then reflecting on the effectiveness of your management. (Task 3)
D3 Demonstrate convergent/lateral/creative thinking Problems have been solved
To achieve D3 your report recommendations need to directly relate to potential communication problems and provide solutions (Task 2)
Assignment brief
Unit number and title Unit 1: Communications in Health and Social Care Organisations
Qualification Level 4 HNC/D Diploma in Health and Social Care
Start date 27/06/2016
Deadline/hand-in Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4 Task 5
11/03/16 18/03/16 10/04/16 18/03/16 18/03/16
Assessor
Assignment title Communications in Health and Social Care Organisations
Purpose of this assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to develop learners’ critical thinking and communication skills while analysing and evaluating communication within Health and Social Care Organisations.
Learners will investigate communication processes between people as well as within an organisation, then go on to investigate how the organisation as a whole can manage these processes.
During this investigation, learners will explore verbal and written communication, how common barriers to communication can impact the message that is being transmitted, and ways of overcoming these barriers.
In addition, communication systems within organisations will be critically examined and learners will gain an understanding of the legal frameworks surrounding the recording of information about people.
Learners will gain an understanding of the use of information and communication technology as a tool in health and social care settings.
Learners should note that any direct investigation of communication in health and social care placements or employment should be within the context of a job role. Due regard should be given to the confidentiality of information if used to support assessment evidence for this unit.
Scenario
Your Role
On Thursday the 18th of February and Friday the 19th at 9.45pm, there was an incident at Pine Parks Care Home for the Elderly.
You are a trainee manager carrying out a work placement from your college at Pine Parks Care Home, and you have been assigned the responsibility of investigating the factors involved in causing an incident.
After you have reviewed the situation, you are expected to make a number of recommendations to the care home management and staff with the aim of improving practices and helping prevent an incident like this occurring in the future.
The Service User
Victor Lavarelo is a 76 year old male who has been a resident at Pine Parks Care Home for three months. Originally from the South of Italy, he was raised by a Catholic family and worked as a tailor in a high end establishment similar to the tailors you would find on Savile Row. At a young age, he met the love of his life through their mutual passion for sailing and married her soon after.
In 1972, he moved with his wife and two children to Milan and began teaching fashion at a community college. In the early 1990s he took semi-retirement in order to spend more time with his family and to travel with his husband. He continued teaching as a guest lecturer.
In 2008, a minor heart condition began to interfere more and more with his work commitments and his desire to travel. Then in 2009 his wife died, and he gave up working all together.
In 2015, Victor became a resident in Pine Parks three months after suffering a stroke. His condition is no longer critical, and there are hopes that he will make further recovery. The stroke has resulted in severe weakness and numbness down to left hand side of his body, meaning that he cannot walk without support. His speech function has also been impacted; the language centres of his brain have been damaged resulting in difficulty remembering many words, and other words being commonly mixed up; at the same time, the partial paralysis down the left hand side of his face makes articulating speech very difficult. He can write, but words can still become confused. In addition, it is difficult for him to eat and wash without assistance.
In addition, Victor also presents symptoms that could be interpreted as early signs of dementia.
Although Pine Parks is located in the Brighton community because it is close to the beach, Victor’s children do not live in the immediate vicinity. His son Gregor lives in Essex with his family, and his daughter Susanna lives in Cardiff. There does seem to be some family complications for Victor and Susanna, but this specific nature of these complications is not available to us.
Incidents
Event 1
Thursday 21st February 2016 – 11.15pm
Sralatha Gaddamidi was working the night shift. While conducting her rounds and checking medication logs of residents.
As part of his routine, Mr Lavarello typically eats a small snack one hour after he has taken his heart medication, and Sralatha had brought his snack to him.
She found that Mr. Lavarello’s log was not clearly labelled, and she could not ascertain whether he had taken his heart medication or not.
She began to investigate and asked him direct questions. However, she found it difficult to understand his reply. She did not even know if he was understanding her properly. So she began repeating the word “pills?” To which he merely held out his hand, and she replied “no”, and he simply turned over in his bed and faced the other direction, a common action for Mr. Lavarello.
Because of the importance of Mr. Lavarello’s heart condition, Latha continued pursuing the issue. She said “I’m sorry Victor, but you must tell me about your pills.” He did not respond, just turned out his bed lamp.
She turned on the main room light. At which point, he responded with a verbal insult both sexist and discriminatory against her Hindi religion.
In response, she took the food, turned off the light and shut the door.
She then waited for the duty nurse to return from a short trip to pick up toilet roll from the supermarket.
Event 2
Friday 22nd February 8.45pm.
The following day, Mr. Lavarello’s son Gregor Lavarello waited to confront Sralatha at the end of her afternoon shift. In full view of other residents, he explained “how would you feel if some stupid little girl stole your food!”
He continued shouting as she stood in terrified silence until co-worker David Banner interrupted, asking Sralatha if she was okay.
Gregor Lavarello continued shouting despite David’s interference, standing directly behind David and staring directly at Sralatha.
At which point, David instructed Gregor to leave the premises.
Event 3
Upon hearing about the incident, Ms. Muffer, part of the senior management team confronted Sralatha, criticised her judgement and terminated her work placement on the spot.
Event 4
Sralatha filed a grievance against Ms. Muffer for unfair dismissal citing several reasons.
Consequences
This and other similar breakdowns in communication were brought up during the ‘Care Quality Commission’ (CQC), resulting in Park Pines being designated as ‘Needs Improvement’. This low quality designation threatens the stability of the company and also unsettles residents and their families.
As a result, your report and recommendations are seen as essential to Park Pines’ goal of resolving the issue and improving their CQC grading.
Task 1 – Complete Organisation Paperwork (AC 1.2)
Investigate the situation.
Complete an ‘Incident Report’ form on behalf of those involved.
Complete a ‘Personal Development’ form for each member of staff, helping them analyse and evaluate the situation and create a strategy to improve their professional practice.
Task 2 – Report
Following the recent interaction with the Lavarelo family and the CQC grading, you have been asked to write a report analysing the breakdown of communication, the different ways that inappropriate interpersonal communication could have been dealt with, the reasons the organisation needs to improve its management of communication among staff and service users, and clear recommendations for improvement.
Your report is expected to be in three parts
Part 1: A review of the communication breakdown
• Explain the communication process
• Explain how and why communication broke down between staff and the Lavarello family
• Explain how communication between the Lavarello family and care staff can be affected by culture and values (AC 2.1)
• Apply relevant theories of communication to this context within this section (AC 1.1)
Part 2: An analysis of how communication operates within a Care Home setting
• Analyse the use of strategies used by the organisation and the individual to support users of health and social care services with specific communication needs (AC1.4) with reference to relevant communication theories (AC1.1).
• explain how legislation, charters and codes of practice impacts on the communication process within care homes like Park Pines and with service users like the Lavarello family (AC 2.2)
• Analyse the effectiveness of organizational systems and policies in promoting good practice in communication (AC 2.3)
Part 3: Recommendations on ways to improve communication within the organisation
• Review methods of dealing with inappropriate interpersonal communication between individuals (AC1.3) (These should be linked to relevant theories of communication AC1.1)
• Recommend ways that the organisation as well as individuals can improve communication practices in Park Pines (AC 2.4)
• Note: your report recommendations need to directly relate to potential communication problems and provide solutions (D1)
To achieve M1 you need to make effective judgements in your report about the effectiveness of organisational systems and policies in promoting good practice in communication
To achieve M3 your report must be structured in a clear, logical and sequenced way following the guidelines laid out for a report, and also flowing with consistent ease from one topic to the next.
To achieve M2 you need to apply theoretical content related to the communication cycle, barriers to communication and psychological factors in a way helps clarify the causes and the implications of the incident.
Task 3 – Training Video/ Roleplay
Following your report, you have been asked to create a role-play training video to show good practice to the care home staff. (AC 3.1)
In your video, you should work with a partner to show four examples of how to resolve inappropriate interpersonal communication between care home staff and service users, as well as between care home staff and their colleagues. (AC 1.2)
To achieve D2 you will have demonstrated how you have managed the group work preparation of your role play activities. This will involve creating a plan, taking detailed notes of your group work progress and then reflecting on the effectiveness of your management.
Task 4 – Written Reflection
After your video, you have been asked to write a reflection of your role-play reviewing what you have learned about communication between individuals, communication within organisations, communication theories as well as how external factors can impact communication in the workplace, and reviewing how each of these can help you improve your professional practice. (AC 1.3)
To achieve D1 you need to use a reflective model to carry out a critical review of your performance in the report Task 1 and role play in Task 3 and arrived at sound conclusions.
Note: This will be completed in the college during a time constrained assessment. You can bring up to 4 A4 pages of typed notes with references. However, you are not permitted to have access to the internet or mobile phones. Standard exam conditions will apply.
Task 5 – Individual Presentation
Following this, you have also been asked to investigate the potential benefits of ICT systems in the workplace and make a presentation for the Care Manager to present with you at an annual conference.
Step 1 Research the range of information and communication technology (ICT) available for use in the health and social care setting you have chosen
Step 2 Analyse the benefits of using ICT for service users such as the Lavarello family, care workers and Park Pines (AC3.2)
Step 3 Analyse how legal considerations in the use of ICT impact on the health and social care setting that you chose (AC3.3)
Step 4 Organise your findings using PowerPoint with accompanying explanatory notes and include in your presentation examples of software packages that demonstrate the use of (AC 3.1):
• word-processing
• spreadsheets
• database
• information retrieval
• internet
• email
• image software
Evidence checklist Summary of evidence required by student Evidence presented
Task 1
Incident Report and Staff Appraisals
Task 2
Reflection
Task 3
Role play
Task 4
Reflection
Task 5 Presentation
Submission Guidelines:
Excellent Formatting:
• Preferred writing styles Calibri
• Line spacing 1.5, Font Size 12
• Clear headings
• Clear introductions and summaries for each section of your report
• Consistency in Heading Scheme, bullets and numbering
• Consistency in top, bottom and left, right margins
• Consistently referencing secondary academic sources
• Clear Citations and Alphabetical Reference List following the format of Harvard Referencing
*For Late Submission policy, please refer to your student course handbook available on Live Campus.
Plagiarism Rules and Regulations
• No plagiarism is accepted in assignments and students are advised to do the referencing correctly according to the Harvard Referencing System.
• Students are advised to submit assignments with a plagiarism percentage below 15%. Any student submitting an assignment with a percentage of more than 15% will have their work reviewed by the appropriate Exam Board.
• Reduce your plagiarism by not sharing assignments and doing in text citations of sources used, using the Harvard referencing method
What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is the software that EThames uses to calculate the similarity of your assignment to any other document submitted in the same system all over the world.
What happens when you submit an assignment on Turnitin?
You submit your assignment on Turnitin by submitting it on Livecampus on the assignment submission link. Your assignment is then compared with all of the assignments for all the different units submitted on Livecampus as well as assignments submitted by other students in other colleges and books and documents all over the world. The report generated is not the final report. The final report will only be generated after the final deadline which would mean that once the submission link closes and once every student submitted assignments at EThames for the specific unit, only then the final report will be generated. This means that if you have shared your assignment with anybody and they have submitted part of it or the full assignment the initial report your friend got would’ve indicated the similarity, but your report would’ve remained unchanged. This is because the report is refreshed every time that you upload your assignment and then finally after the deadline. After the deadline their plagiarism will be high as well as your own.
What can you do to avoid getting a high Turnitin score?
• Do not copy pieces of work from any book or website. It needs to be rewritten in your own words and proper in text citation should be done according to the Harvard referencing method
• Do not share your assignment with any friend, not even to assist them
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This constitutes academic theft and is a serious matter which is penalised in assignment marking.
Plagiarism is the submission of an item of assessment containing elements of work produced by another person(s) in such a way that it could be assumed to be the student’s own work. Examples of plagiarism are:
• The verbatim copying of another person’s work without acknowledgement
• The close paraphrasing of another person’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement
• The unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own.
Copying or close paraphrasing with occasional acknowledgement of the source may also be deemed to be plagiarism if the absence of quotation marks implies that the phraseology is the student’s own.
Plagiarised work may belong to another student or be from a published source such as a book, report, journal or material available on the internet.
