Organisational Duty of Candour: non-statutory guidance - revised March 2025

2. The Need for Candour

Openness and honesty should be central to the actions of those providing care to others and at the heart of every relationship between those providing, receiving and/or experiencing treatment and care. Trust and effective communication can be difficult to maintain and easy to lose when there are concerns about unexpected or intended incidents that have or could result in death or harm.

Managing risk is a central part of delivering high quality health, care, and social work services. Candour promotes responsibility for developing safer systems, better engages staff in improving services, and encourages greater trust in people who use these services, either directly or on behalf of someone else.

The organisational duty of candour underpins the Scottish Government’s commitment to openness and learning, which are vital to the provision of safe, effective and person-centred health and social care.

Putting the people who use the service at the centre of organisational responses to unintended or unexpected incidents resulting in, or that could result in, death or harm helps create the conditions where people feel psychologically safe to contribute to organisational processes and procedures.

Personalised organisational apologies and interactions with people, when an unintended or unexpected incident has occurred, require a commitment to support and train everyone involved in meetings, reviews, and actions that occur from activating the organisational duty of candour procedure.