Investigating complaints

Investigating complaints means listening to the patient and focusing on the key issues and questions raised.

• Good practice in complaint handling
  • Investigating complaints
  • Formal responses to complaints
  • Making an apology
  • Action plans
  • Sharing learning from complaints
• Complaint handling in the new NHS
• Understanding what it means to be an NHS provider
• Getting it right: our work in the new NHS

Clinical input should be sought on the results of any failings, as well as on the question of what, if anything, went wrong. If clinicians’ statements do not make sense, if they are mutually or internally contradictory, if they are inconsistent with what is in the medical notes, or are full of technical jargon, it is not sufficient to simply copy them into the response letter. Any differences must be reconciled and any jargon converted into language a lay person will understand.