Liam is the facility manager at a residential aged care facility.  The service provides independent living units, community nursing and home care packages, day centre visits, respite care, palliative care, and dementia specific care, to older people. Liam is responsible for managing legal and ethical compliance within the organisation, ensuring the facility’s AHPRA registration and accreditation are up to date, and maintaining collaborative and effective relationships with all multidisciplinary team members.

Lucy, a casual nurse, comes to work with symptoms of gastroenteritis. She knows that she should have stayed home but she knew the service was going to be short staffed. After carrying out her duties for three hours, Lucy talks to her manager, Janice, in the tea room. She explains her symptoms and that she is feeling weak and unsteady.

Janice tells her to go home immediately as gastroenteritis is highly contagious and could pose a severe health risk to residents and other staff members.

That evening, four residents develop gastroenteritis. Liam has left work for the day but receives a phone call from the night nursing unit manager alerting him to the spread of virus (herein called ‘the incident’). Liam responds immediately by ordering the service into lock down. One of the residents who contracted the virus is taken to hospital for treatment and is in a critical condition.

Liam organises refresher training for all staff with regard to duty of care. Liam receives an incident report form from Janice regarding Lucy’s illness.

He thinks that because of Lucy’s failure to comply with organisational work health and safety procedures relating to infection control, the organisation has breached its duty of care to provide residents with a safe and healthy care environment.

List and describe two information sources that Liam could regularly access for more information about his organisation’s legal and ethical compliance requirements regarding infection control.

Two sources of information that can be accessed by Liam for more information are-

1) Liam can assess the health of government departments. In these departments, he can find important information regarding infection control & stop around his services.

2) Liam can also seek the help of the code developers regarding ethics or conducts. He can also take advice form specialists. They can help to collect valuable information. The information will be related to how infection can be controlled within the services so that it cannot affect or not spread among the staff members or service users (Gilbert, & Kerridge, 2019).

He could evaluate his responsibility by Knowing his specific responsibilities, including managing staff, planning and evaluating departmental activities; ensuring a safe, secure, and legal work environment. The writing of job descriptions for managers in policies and procedures, for example, describing their qualifications and skills and requiring education and experience. It may be necessary to create a work plan, and he must ensure everything complies with regulations, such as infection control (Gilbert, & Kerridge, 2019).

Some of the places where Liam can access and interpret the legal information related to the incident are-

1) He can assess the information from government officials. These officials are assigned to the area or state for further information.

2) He can assess the information from the private solicitor of an attorney who is specialized in geriatric care subject.

While Lucy was not feeling well, they could have breached WHS legislation, codes of practice, and their duty of care if they continued to assist her to work. As Lucy comes to work with the symptoms of gastroenteritis.

if Lucy stayed at work there was an increase in eh chances to spread of the infection. The things like weakness and the spread of infection do not occur (Sherman, & Hopf, 2018).

Identify the specialist legal experts Liam could contact to obtain advice on the rights and responsibilities of the organisation, workers and the residents involved in the incident.

He might benefit from consulting with a lawyer who has special knowledge in work health & safety legislation, Australian industry standards, and civil law, including negligence, for advice on how to handle situation.

Lucy has brs. She also knows that she must not come to work. She also did not consult with her supervisor. She discussed with Janis when she carried out her duty of 3 hours. As a result of Lucy’s breach of due care at work, a lockdown was imposed. Also, because she was sick and worked despite knowing she was sick, she breached the code of practice of the workplace (Dollard, et al., 2019).

It is within the scope of practice for Liam to hanlde incident as he has duty it provides the resident with health care and a safe environment. Industry guidelines must be followed by Liam and they must be up to date with the infection control procedures. Incidents might be managed by the lain through the experiences. Training and his knowledge and skills.

Liam should have an elder care risk assessment & control process so that he has all the information regarding the incident. His supervisor would have appreciated this if he had provided all the materials to him. It will enable the supervisor to analyze what and where the organization needs to improve to prevent a recurrence of the incident, by supplying the supervisor with the materials (Sherman, & Hopf, 2018).

Explain why it is important for Liam to evaluate the ethical responsibilities of the organisation to workers, service users, and the broader community.

The organization’s ethical responsibility must be evaluated by Liam to ensure that service users, workers, & the broader community are safe. It is also ensure that all the members of staff must meet present best practices needs of the industry. It also makes sure the agented care facility continues to fulfill compliance needs.

Describe how Janice could model ethical behaviour in her own work to ensure all nursing staff understand their ethical and legal responsibilities to report potential workplace hazards.

Janice can model ethical behaviors by her action within the scope of practice. She must listen to others first then she must provide the right decision for others. She can also maintain the duty of care for the people who needs support continually. She can also provide motivation, support, and encouragement to the support workers. All the time she must also effectively follow her roles and responsibilities. She can also timely organize for all the staff members a refresher training about the duty of care (Potter, et al., 2019)

Identify and describe four policies and procedures Liam should use to support legal and ethical compliance when managing the incident.

1. Work safety and health – It mainly involves common risks and hazards in aged care and legal responsibilities of safety and health.

2. Procedures of infection control – It involves the utilization of PPE, secure manual handling, health hygiene, etc.

3. Procedures of incident record and report – The safety and health of other individuals at risk should be reported to the senior executives and also should be recorded.

4. Complaints and grievances – Any consumers who are not satisfied with facilities can make grievances and complaints (Babayanju, et al., 2017).

Explain why it is important, in the context of the incident, for Liam to integrate documentation and record-keeping requirements into the organisation’s policies and procedures.

It is essential as it helps in making sure liability for the system of creation of documents and in conducting the operations of the business. It also helps in preserving the data, and assists in ensuring expectations and consent (Babayanju, et al., 2017).

1. Liam must make that entire assistance workers have the knowledge of the Privacy Act and make sure that the facilities provided by aged care obey the requirement of privacy.

2. Liam should keep the security and privacy of all records.

Describe how Janice could clarify the roles and responsibilities of team members in the nursing unit to ensure they understand their obligations relating to work health and safety.

Janice can clarify the responsibilities and roles of members by:

1. By reading out the description of the job as it helps in understanding the responsibilities of the particular job.

2. By conducting meetings with the team as it helps the team members to know about the work procedures and policies also.

3. By describing the key performance indicators as per the job of the individuals.

Describe how Liam could re-distribute the organisation’s work health and safety procedures to ensure an issue like this does not happen again.

Liam could do this by following the given below:

Email – By informing the team members through email and also making them aware of dealing with this kind of issue in the upcoming time.

2. Updated procedures and policies – It should explain accurately what is expected to mainly act regarding controlling infection, the duty of care of the team and actions to be taken in future if the same things occur again.

3. Again give training to staff – Module regarding the course of training should be set and education and skills gap should be filled (Congedo, 2016).

Liam could do this by following the given points:

1. Holding meetings with the team – Liam should hold a team meeting to make sure that all workers are provided with significant opportunities for discussing the problems they are suffering from.

2. By observation – Liam can observe constantly and also record the performance of members of the team.

3. By recording – Liam can read case studies for determining how procedures and policies are applied (Congedo, 2016).

The following individuals are there whom Liam can refer to mainly for advice Manager, Authority of Government, Bodies of Regulatory, Association of Industry.

How could Liam share updated knowledge and information about compliance requirements with his peers and colleagues?

1. Communicating with his colleagues and peers and then sharing the specific information for the recent update.

2. By forwarding email for the updated information and knowledge about requirements of compliance.

3. By conducting the meeting with them with the presentation for showing them and also explaining the whole thing (Buica, et al., 2017).

Liam can use the methodology of plan-do-check-act by following the given points:

1. Plan – He has created the plan for implementing the training for duty of care.

2. Do – Liam could give training to Janice and also to other members of the team with the complete new strategy.

Check – Liam can check that all procedures and policies are effectively followed, can get constructive feedback from team members and make changes according to that.

Act – Liam could execute the entire facilities of aged care if the changes were effective and then constantly evaluate the outcomes (Buica, et al., 2017).