CQC policy requirements for nursing homes
Nursing homes provide accommodation with nursing care delivered by registered nurses, so alongside everything a residential home needs, your policies must cover clinical practice and professional accountability.
Usual regulated activity: Accommodation for persons who require nursing or personal care, often with treatment of disease, disorder or injury
Core policies
- Safeguarding adults (and children, where relevant), including how to raise and escalate concerns
- Complaints handling, with timescales and how people can escalate outside the service
- Duty of candour (Regulation 20) and incident reporting
- Recruitment and fit and proper persons checks, including DBS (Regulation 19)
- Staff training, supervision and induction (Regulation 18)
- Consent and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (Regulation 11)
- Data protection, confidentiality and record keeping (Regulation 17)
- Whistleblowing / speaking up
- Equality, diversity and human rights
Clinical and nursing areas
- Clinical governance and nurse revalidation with the NMC
- Medicines management, including controlled drugs and covert administration
- Pressure ulcer prevention and wound care
- Recognising deterioration and escalation (for example NEWS2 or RESTORE2)
- Catheter, PEG and other clinical procedures
- Infection prevention and control, including sharps
- End of life care, DNACPR and advance care planning
- DoLS and best interests decisions
How CQC looks at your policies
Under CQC's single assessment framework, evidence is grouped under five key questions: Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led. Organising your library the same way makes it easier to show inspectors where each policy fits. Regulation 17 (good governance) expects you to keep policies current and to check they're followed, which is why a dated record of staff reading each version is useful evidence.
Frequently asked questions
What extra policies does a nursing home need compared with a care home?
Mainly clinical ones: clinical governance, nursing procedures, deterioration and escalation, controlled drugs, and wound and pressure care.
Do nurses need to sign that they've read policies?
It isn't a legal requirement, but a signed, dated record against the current version is strong evidence that staff know your procedures.
Let MyCarePolicies keep this up to date for you
A managed policy library grouped by the five key questions, updated for you, with staff notified and proof they've read each version.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. MyCarePolicies is not affiliated with or endorsed by CQC. Other guides: Care homes, Domiciliary care, Supported living.