Impact #4 - Don't be afraid of the 'C' word

Paul McFadden, Head of Complaints Standards for the Scottish Public Service Ombudsman (SPSO) writes the final blog in our Impact series. 

           

Complaining can very often get a bad name.  Some people do not want to complain because they feel it will stigmatise them.  Others feel there is no point in raising issues. Some people have trouble accessing or getting through the system. Organisations and staff can be worried about what complaints mean for them or the organisation’s public reputation.   

The truth is that valuing complaints and seeing them as positive learning experiences has really significant benefits for organisations. Things are improving in many respects - the Patient Rights Act and supporting framework have helped focus attention on improving complaint handling in the light of high profile failures such as Mid-Staffordshire.  There is still work to be done, however, to achieve a truly positive valuing complaints culture.

At SPSO, we work hard to help organisations improve. We explain what a valuing complaints culture looks like and how this can be achieved.  It is a culture where all staff are open to people raising not only positive but negative experiences.  It is accessible, quick, responsive and focused on early resolution.  It helps rebuild relationships and confidence by responding without fear or defensiveness to complaints and being honest when things have gone wrong.  It tries to put things right for the individual and to learn for others.  Encouraging organisations and the public to see complaints as a positive can at times feel an uphill struggle.  And culture change isn’t easy. 

We find Patient Opinion (and Care Opinion currently being trialled in parts of Scotland) has been a very helpful ally in moving us towards this culture change, by helping to raise the profile of feedback generally but also by showcasing positive responses to negative (and positive!) experiences.  And this extends beyond the NHS and the care sector.  

                 

In training sessions it provides us with an invaluable source of real life examples of responses to complaints and how these worked.  These can be used to help people improve their skills and to demonstrate good initial responses.   They can help build confidence in those who want to try a new approach or who are simply unsure what best to do or say when approached by someone with a complaint. 

Patient Opinion also provides real examples of how feedback has been used to make change.  This is something organisations often struggle with and simply seeing it in practice can be enough to help them think creatively. 

Patient Opinion is still young and we are all still learning how it can be used.  Organisations who use Patient Opinion could gain even more value by linking the stories and analytical information from PO to the other ways they receive feedback to make it part of their regular reporting and learning from themes and trends across all the ways  the public will contact them. Online will never be the only solution and if we want a real valuing complaints culture in Scotland we need to ensure there are many accessible feedback routes and a person-centred approach at all points.  However, the visibility and transparency of online feedback provides a lever that can really help us all make that cultural shift.