This page is designed to answer the following questions:
- 2.1c Explain why feedback from others is important in helping to develop and improve the way they work (Care Certificate, Standard 2: Your Personal Development)
- 2.2e Describe how feedback from others has developed their own knowledge, skills and understanding (Care Certificate, Standard 2: Your Personal Development)
- 4.4 Describe how feedback from others has developed own knowledge, skills and understanding (Level 2 Diploma in Care, Personal development in care settings)
- 3.2 Use feedback to evaluate own performance and inform development (Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care, Promote personal development in care settings)
- 3.2 Use feedback to evaluate own performance and inform development (Level 4 Diploma in Adult Care, Personal development in health, social care or children’s and young people’s settings)
NOTE: This page has been quality assured for 2023 as per our Quality Assurance policy.
A great way of improving practice is by obtaining feedback from others. This includes feedback from clients, colleagues, managers and other professionals.
Although it may be daunting to hear the opinions of others, especially if they are negative, you should view them as a way to develop and improve your practice. By taking this perspective and getting feedback regularly, you can build resilience to being adversely affected by criticism on a personal level.
Although you may be given unrequested feedback on your practice as part of your role (such as from your manager during supervision or an individual’s family in the form of a complaint/compliment), you should also directly ask others for feedback. Actively encouraging others to give you feedback makes them feel more confident about being honest with you and ultimately uncover areas of your practice that could be improved.
Data collection methods, such as questionnaires and surveys, can be used to gather a lot of feedback at the same time. This information can then be analysed for patterns, informing priorities for service improvement.
You should take all feedback seriously and reflect on what you have been told because it can help you to become a better practitioner – you do not have to agree with all feedback you receive, but you should take time to think about it and try to understand why it was given.
For example, your manager may have told you that you seem to make a lot of mistakes on the balance checks. This allows you to work with your manager to find out where you are going wrong and why and then work to correct it – it may just be as simple as feeling rushed, in which case your manager should ensure you have sufficient time to do the task in the future.
Or it could be that you are having difficulty motivating a client, so a colleague explains that this particular client responds better to staff that have a bit of banter with him. During your next shift with him, you use banter to motivate him, and you have none of the previous difficulties.
Case Study: An example of feedback improving a care worker’s practice
During my first weeks working with a new client, he got upset for no apparent reason and went to his bedroom and slammed the door. He came back down a few minutes later with his hood pulled over his head and would not talk to me. I asked what was wrong and tried to converse with him for over an hour, but he ignored me.
A little later, one of my colleagues explained that this particular client behaved in this way to gain attention and that the best thing to do was to ignore him until he had calmed down. I put this into practice the next time he did this, and within ten minutes (after realising I wasn’t giving him any attention), his hood came down, and he apologised and started chatting to me.