Section 21 – Incident which activates duty of candour procedure
85.Section 21 describes incidents which give rise to the duty of candour procedure. The responsible person (defined in section 25) is required to follow the duty of candour procedure where the person has provided someone with a health service, a care service, or a social work service, and in the course of providing that service an unintended or unexpected incident has occurred which has resulted in certain outcomes. The outcomes need to relate to the incident rather than being attributable to the person’s illness or condition. The decision as to whether the outcome relates to the incident is to be made by a registered health professional who was not involved in the incident itself.
86.The outcomes are set out in subsection (4) and cover a range of physical and psychological effects as well as death.
87.Subsection (5) provides the Scottish Ministers with the power to make regulations to amend the list of outcomes in subsection (4). Under section 32(2), any such regulations would be subject to the affirmative procedure.