My wife in particular has never been averse to complaining to doctors or NHS and its generally kicked them up the ass and her subsequent care has seemed better, they suddenly become a bit more... more invested, interested.
And what did she complain about, something trivial? The NHS and their protectors go to extraordinary lengths disseminating reams of propaganda designed to portray the complaints system as honest and fair, and complainants who are easily satisfied with platitudes like "we're sorry you feel that way" are just grist for the mill. They love those.
The ones they don't like so much are the dangerous ones who won't be fobbed off, who keep coming back with embarrassing evidence, and worst of all, people like me who made audio recordings of them lying.
It's interesting to listen to the program the BBC made about patients recording doctors. The version that went out on the
World Service included UK GP Dr Ayan Panja saying
“We of course already in British general practice record our consultations”, but he doesn't want patients recording him
"because you have to make sure you’re doing the best possible job". Compare that with the version for the domestic market that went out on
Radio 4, in which Panja's contribution has been left out. Did you know your doctors are recording you, because they sure as hell don't like it when you record them.
Have a look at what Parliament had to say about their handiwork when they set up the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman, quoted verbatim from the 24 Jan 1967 entry in Hansard:
“Anyone who contemplates an office of this kind is faced with the dilemma of making it either a Frankenstein or a nonentity—a Frankenstein if it has effective powers and a nonentity if it has not. The Government, quite rightly, has opted for its being a nonentity, and in that sense it is a fraud......I congratulate the Government on its being a nonentity......it is a noble facade without anything behind it.”
A fraud, a nonentity, and a facade.
Now have a look at Paragraph 7.69 from the
PHSO Service Model Main Guidance, providing them with a loophole they can use to reject any complaint they want to, followed by an email to Broomfield Hospital from a PHSO 'investigator' coaching them what to say:
Just take a few minutes to think about what the public reaction would be like if the police had coached a defendant to stand in the dock and say
"Yes your Honour, I did rape the victim, but I've stopped raping women now"
and then the judge had replied
"Oh, that's OK then, off you go"
Section 15 Paragraph 1 of the
Health Service Commissioners Act 1993 has been used to prevent Scotland Yard from investigating them on
32 counts of Misconduct in Public Office (that's corruption to you and me). So that's the PHSO effectively above the law.
Now tell me that the complaint system isn't corrupt and there solely to protect the NHS.
Here are a few of the findings from
Kings College London research into doctors' and nurses' attitude to complaints:
"We find that interviewees rationalised patients’ motives for complaining in ways that marginalised the content of their concerns"
"it was rare for interviewees to describe complaints raised by patients as grounds for improving the quality of care"
"it was rare for complaints about care raised by patients to involve more than immediate teams"
"it was rare for a complaint raised by patients to be attended to ‘in and of’ itself: as legitimate knowledge or experience"
"We suggest that current consumer orientated/learning approaches that advise staff to ‘take complaints seriously’ or ‘receive them as gifts’ are unlikely, in themselves, to convince care professionals of the value of patient insight and experiential knowledge"
In my experience and observation, the main flaws in the service come down to bad management.
Actually,
67% of all complaints are against clinical staff, doctors & nurses, but it suits them to cultivate a public perception that the primary problem lies with admin, which only accounts for 19%.
the quality of care given is great
I receive excellent service
And those who get great service have utterly no conception that there are others who don't. None at all.
My wife has cancer and while circumstances are delaying her surgery, we simply can't complain about the system
Concurrent with the period in 2012/13 when the NHS were denying any knowledge of my heart arrhythmia I also had a referral for a bowel tumour. There were 359 patients referred in that quarter, and 358 of them were done within the 30 day target time. Guess who's the one who wasn't. It took them a month just to tell me the result of the biopsy, and that's on top of the 6 months from referral to surgery.
But you're right, you can't complain, can you.
