13. Can an organisation or learning environment fail an audit?

The audit is designed to support improvement of practice based learning. To this end, an organisation or learning environment can be found during an audit to require substantial improvement and support as identified by the performance against the audit standards. The organisation or learning environment is not deemed to have failed in these circumstances The audit team, learning environment and host organisation may decide together, that students should not access the learning environments to enable the time and space for further development and improvement. The mechanisms and support for improvement will be clearly laid out in the audit action plan. Following implementation of the action plan students / learners can access the learning environment(s).

User safety including that of patients, clients and students is a requirement of organisations providing health and social care services. The implementation of health and safety policies forms a component of the audit as does the students perceptions of how well their welfare needs are met. In the unusual circumstance where the audit identifies that health and safety issues of any service users are compromised the relevant service manager will be notified immediately, and a ciritical incident meeting will be arranged. The relevant persons within the learning environment and the organisation (including health and safety advisor), will meet with the audit team and if appropriate with students, patients or clients in attendance in order to discuss and resolve the health and safety issue.