Authorisation, Responsibility and Legislation You Must Know

Social and health assistant is not just a job title – it is a protected, authorised title. This means you cannot call yourself an assistant or carry out work under that title until you have passed the apprenticeship and received your authorisation. The rules exist to protect citizens and patients: when you are authorised, everyone knows you have a certain professional standard and personal responsibility for your work.

Authorisation is Applied For When You Have Proof of Having Passed the Education. It is the Danish Patient Safety Authority that Issues it. Authorisation Comes With Both Rights and Duties: You May Perform Certain Healthcare Tasks, but You Are Also Responsible for Doing So Safely and Within Your Competencies.

Part of your work is health-related tasks that the doctor or nurse delegates to you — e.g. certain medication tasks or treatments. When a task is delegated, it is your responsibility to decline if you do not feel competent for it, and it is the person delegating who bears the responsibility for ensuring you are trained. You must know the line between what you may independently handle and what requires you to call in a nurse or doctor.

• 01You work independently within your area of competence
• 02Certain tasks are performed after delegation from a doctor or nurse
• 03You have the duty to speak up if a task is outside your competencies
• 04You have personal professional responsibility for what you perform

You get access to very sensitive information about the people you work with. Confidentiality is non-negotiable – you may not share information about citizens and patients, either privately or on social media. At the same time, you have a documentation obligation: your observations and actions must be recorded in the journal so the next person in the chain can act correctly. What is not documented is considered in practice not to have happened.

The health service has a system for unintended incidents where errors and near-accidents are reported – not to punish, but to learn and prevent it from happening again. As an authorized professional, you have both the right and duty to report when something is not as it should be. A culture where you dare to report mistakes is a safe culture.

“Authorisation is Your Professional Signature – It Gives You More Rights But Also Obliges You to More.”