Keeps it safe

Knowing the Edge of the Support Worker Role

A CORA decision skill · about a 4-minute read

The edge of the role is not there to limit you. It is there because the things past it need somebody with different training, and because guessing is worse than saying you do not know.

Stay in Lane means

Know the edge of the role: support, don't diagnose or decide for; recognise what isn't yours to handle.

What it looks like on shift

  • Somebody asks you what is wrong with them medically, and you help them ask the person who can answer.
  • You notice something that looks clinical, and you report it rather than interpret it.
  • You say “I do not know, let us find out” instead of filling the gap.

What it looks like when it slips

  • Offering an opinion that gets recorded and then repeated as fact.
  • Adjusting something clinical because it seems obvious and the person is uncomfortable.
  • Taking on a decision that belongs to the person, their family, or a practitioner, because taking it is faster.

Three things to try on your next shift

  1. Practise the sentence “that is not mine to answer, but here is who can” until it is comfortable.
  2. When you write a note, check whether you have described or diagnosed. Only one of them is yours.
  3. If you are ever unsure whether something is in your role, treat that uncertainty as the answer and ask.

You are allowed to say no

If you have not been trained for something, or it is not in your role, you can say so and not do it. That is a complete answer. It stays a complete answer when a family member asks you, when the shift is short staffed, when somebody senior is standing there, and when the person themselves really wants you to. “I am not trained for that, I will find out who is” is the whole sentence, and you do not owe anybody more of it than that.

The edges that catch people out are usually the same few. Medication, which means the dose, the timing, holding one back, and crushing or splitting a tablet. Setting up or adjusting equipment. Changing food texture or how thick a drink is. And improvising around a behaviour support plan because it does not seem to be working today.

When the question is whether something is inside your role, checking has never been the thing that caused the harm. Guessing has, and in almost every case the guess was well meant and made by somebody trying to be useful. An emergency is the exception to the pause and not to the rule: if somebody needs help right now, get help right now.

Before you act: Always follow your own organisation's policy first. For a suspected poisoning or medication error, the Poisons Information Centre is 13 11 26. In an emergency, call 000.

More in Keeps it safe:

  • Escalate WellSpot when it needs to go up (risk, health change, safeguarding) and act, not too early, not too late.
  • Steady the MomentMeet distress or escalation in a way that calms, not inflames.

All ten decision skills →