UNIT 3 – HEALTH, SAFETY AND SECURITY IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
P1 – Explain potential hazards and the harm that may arise from each in a health and social care setting.
Hazards are referred to as anything that can cause harm to someone. Hazards can be found everywhere, for example, people will be able to spot hazards when travelling to work and when they are present in the workplace. Additionally, there are three main types of hazard, these are health hazards, safety hazards and security hazards. A health hazard would be a risk of somebody becoming ill from an incident. A safety hazard would associate with someone becoming injured, however a safety hazard could also relate to an incident that can be caused by broken equipment or a damaged building. A security hazard would be the risk of an incident where for example information has been exposed, intruders entering a property whereby a child might be abducted from a school or even a patient discharges themselves from a health and social care setting without consent.
Employers, employees and professionals overall, in particular health and social care professionals have to prevent risks that may arise from hazards in order to keep themselves, other service providers and service users safe from illness, injury or any potential harm overall; every individual within the workplace has to be kept safe from harm (even cleaners and caterers). Although there should be a balance between exposing individuals to unreasonable risks and over protecting people to a point where people can no longer identify risks themselves. There can be numerous risks of hazards from different age groups and situations within a health and social care setting. A Risk that can arise within a hospital is