Care Certificate, Standard 14 of 15
Handling information
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 as they apply to care records, the Caldicott principles, recording that is factual, timely, legible and defensible, sharing information lawfully, and what to do about a breach.
Why this standard matters in practice
Care records are legal documents that outlive everyone's memory of the shift. The record you write at 3am is the evidence, in both directions, when something is questioned two years later.
How it is assessed
The knowledge in this standard is assessed by a knowledge check, which you can take here as part of the Care Certificate course. Attempts are unlimited and marking happens on our servers, so the answers are never sent to the browser.
Your employer's assessor must also observe you applying it in practice before this standard is complete. That is how the Care Certificate is designed, and it is the reason a purely online Care Certificate does not exist however it is advertised.
Questions about Standard 14
What makes a good care record entry?
Fact over opinion, written at the time or as close as possible, specific enough that a stranger could act on it, and honest about what you observed versus what you were told. 'Declined breakfast, low mood, will retry at ten' beats 'fine all shift' every single time it matters.