Communication and complaint handling
The NHS Constitution highlights the importance of good communication in order to build trust between healthcare providers and patients and their families. Despite this, poor communication is still one of the most common reasons for people to bring complaints about the NHS to the Ombudsman. Poor communication during care or treatment can be compounded by a health body’s failure to respond sensitively, thoroughly or properly to a patient’s complaint – resulting in an overall experience of the NHS that leaves a patient or their family feeling that they have not been listened to or that their individual needs have not been taken care of. Poor communication can undermine successful clinical treatment, turning a patient’s story of their experience with the NHS from one of success to one of frustration, anxiety and dissatisfaction.
Good communication involves asking for feedback, listening to patients, and understanding their concerns and the outcome they are looking for. It is about keeping patients and their families informed and giving them clear, prompt, accurate, complete and empathetic explanations for decisions. Issues of confidentiality, insensitive or inappropriate language, use of jargon and a failure to take account of patients’ own expertise in their condition feature frequently in complaints.
When the NHS fails, it is not always easy for patients to complain. We hear regularly of patients’ fears that complaining will affect the quality of their future treatment, or single them out in some way. Patients and their families need to be encouraged to speak up and give feedback, and be confident that their experience will be listened to. When they do complain, the NHS must properly and objectively investigate the complaint, acknowledge any failings and provide an appropriate remedy. Most often this is simply an apology, but it may also include an explanation, financial redress or wider policy or system changes to prevent the same thing happening again.
In last year’s Listening and Learning report, we told the stories of people who had a poor experience of NHS complaint handling. We repeatedly found incomplete responses, inadequate explanations, unnecessary delays, factual errors and no acknowledgement of mistakes. These all too familiar shortcomings remain amongst the main reasons which complainants give for their dissatisfaction with NHS complaint handling, as this image shows. Opportunities are being missed to learn lessons which have the potential to improve services for others.
In the case studies we recount the experiences of people who suffered as a result of poor communication or who were left dissatisfied, frustrated and distressed with the way the NHS dealt with their complaint.
