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Which response would you prefer?

Question from Care Opinion

Posted by on

 

picture of Ben Pathe

Isn't it puzzling how the same kind of thing can provoke entirely different responses? Here’s one Mental Health Trust responding to patient feedback:

“Although we are unable to respond to this individual’s experiences on this forum [Patient Opinion] we do invite them to make contact through our Patients Advice Liaison Service office”

Unsurprisingly the patient was unimpressed: 

“Thanks for wasting my time in your reply. In my opinion PALS are no use at all. This is also how this service user finds the Mental Health services. Please don't use the standard reply again”

Of course responding in public to anonymous complaints is not what all staff are used to but here is another Mental Health provider taking to feedback like a duck to water.

Having worked with many trusts and providers over the years we know that it is often a surprisingly parochial issue that makes providers react defensively:

  • Perhaps the PALS manager charged with responding has had previous bad experience on Twitter.
  • Or the Trust has very strong feelings about information governance.
  • Or they have their own ‘you said, we did’ web-based service that they want patients to use in preference to platforms like Patient Opinion

It’s not that these positions don’t have some merit. But contrast the above response with this sensitive response to the difficult issues around Sectioning under the Mental Health Act. 

The $64,000 question here is which of these two responses would you prefer as a patient or service user? No contest, huh? 

If you would like help moving from the first kind of response to the second and want to find out more, please feel free to join one of our free WebEx sessions.

We'd love to help and we'd welcome your thoughts and ideas on this topic. 

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Response from MikeD on

Having had a number of experiences of hospitals in recent years, I have had good reason to be grateful, delighted, hugely impressed and occasionally disappointed by the treatment I have received. In the case of positive accounts, I have put some effort into making sure that people know and I have done this through a variety of channels, from personal thanks (and boxes of chocolates) to an article in BMJ. In the case of disappointments, I chose two avenues: one leading to an abstract account of the need for priority setting for an academic book; the other was a letter of complaint to the trust, which led to a response to the effect that remedial action would be taken, including sharing the concerns with the doctor involved in sub-optimal care.

I think what my experience tells me is that there is not one way of giving feedback about performance; the common feature is what recipients do and what I am sure we would hope for is that they can change structures where they need to, and encourage an appropriate culture if that is the source of the challenge.

Mike8702

Response from Ben Pathe, Business Development Officer, Patient Opinion on

Thanks for your response, Mike. I agree there is no one size fits all approach here. From the Trust point of view, it's always about having a comprehensive suite of tools to meet the needs of as wide a group of patients and their relatives as possible.

From the patient point of view, we always want positive feedback to reach the staff it relates to. Finally, as you say, when it's less positive the important thing to us as patients is that the organisations listen, learn and act on what we tell them. 

Response from MentalRugby on

The sensitive and warm response is wonderful, because it's written by someone who wants to improve things. That is the key. The standard answers are given by people who don't care and won't change things. Mental health care is so patchy and so important that when people feel able to give experiences the service should ask itself questions. Schools have OFSTED, time for mental health providers to have some thing similar. 

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