Dental practices need to have a recording system for duty of candour incidents which enables them to provide all the information necessary for their annual report as well as to record learning from the incidents. The reporting should also include information about how the practice has met the various steps within the duty of candour procedure.
Duty of candour incidents are reported annually, as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of the financial year and can be aligned with established reporting procedures for other events, such as adverse events or complaints. Organisations should publish their report to ensure that it is publicly available. Independent dental practices providing wholly private treatment should notify Healthcare Improvement Scotland [1] that they have published their report and dental practices that provide both NHS and private dental treatment should discuss the arrangements for publishing their report with their respective Health Board. When there are no duty of candour incidents, organisations are still required to publish a nil report. The duty of candour lead at your local Health Board will be able to advise about what local arrangements are in place about reporting.
The duty of candour – monitoring and reporting [Factsheet 3] provides brief information on monitoring and reporting. Full details, including sample incident and null reporting templates, can be found in Scottish Government’s Organisational duty of candour: guidance [2].
General Content
As well as helping to promote public confidence, the duty promotes a culture of learning and continuous improvement in health and social care settings and supports the implementation of consistent responses across health and social care providers.
A duty of candour incident may also be a significant event. Further significant event guidance is available on how to approach analysis of why an event has happened in a constructive way. Using this approach to learning, will allow for more meaningful improvement to be implemented, to minimise the risk of an event happening again.
Further information about the duty of candour can be found at NHS TURAS