A new checklist has been developed to help health practitioners handle feedback and complaints.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra), the National Boards and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care developed the checklist in consultation with stakeholders and consumers.
The organisations said, on the Ahpra website: “We know that negative feedback or complaints can be stressful for practitioners. But a positive feedback and complaints culture can help improve the safety and quality of healthcare and services.
“Patients or clients may not always feel that their healthcare experience has been a positive one and may provide negative feedback or a complaint to you. We know this can be confronting and stressful for practitioners and that most practitioners and health services aim to deal with negative feedback and complaints promptly and respectfully.
“Despite this, many concerns raised by patients or clients are not resolved when they are first made locally (in the clinic or practice) when they could be. This can leave people feeling less confident about the care they have received and not in control of their health. It can also lead to concerns being escalated to external agencies unnecessarily.”
The checklist with suggested resources aims to help practitioners effectively handle feedback and complaints when they are first made directly to the health provider and may also be relevant to those who have a role in establishing and maintaining complaints systems and processes.
Advice and tips include:
- For individual practitioner complaints, seek advice from your professional indemnity insurer or professional association depending on the issue raised.
- If responding to a complaint on behalf of the health service, seek internal advice on the policies and processes which you should follow.
- Assess any concerns or risks raised. Act promptly and effectively on safety, legal or regulatory issues including issues that may need a notification. Consider other legislative requirements such as reporting under state child safety legislation.
- Document the feedback or complaint. Keep accurate records and gather all relevant facts and documents.
- To protect confidentiality and privacy, store feedback and complaint records separately from health records and in accordance with privacy principles.
- Make sure the investigation and resolution of a complaint is confidential.
- Make sure your ‘how to provide feedback or a complaint’ information is available in a range of ways, simple to access and easy to use. Ensure this is a culturally safe process, free from racism.
- Put in place and publish effective feedback and complaints management policies and procedures.
- Make sure relevant staff have skills and training in cultural safety, customer service, managing feedback and complaints, having difficult conversations, managing unreasonable conduct, conflict resolution and are aware of carers’ rights.
- Ensure your feedback and complaints process is simple, clear and includes joint problem solving.
- Make sure the process is objective, fair and conflicts of interest are disclosed. Consider the power differences between the patient/client and you/or the healthcare service..
- To help achieve a fair process, speak to the person who made the complaint before it is resolved to discuss the process used, the proposed outcome and key reasons for the proposed outcome.
- Acknowledge feedback and complaints and the impact of the patient or client’s experience as soon as possible.
- Make sure patient or client care is not adversely affected because of feedback or a complaint made. Consider options for a second opinion, review by a colleague or if ongoing treatment should be transferred to another practitioner where appropriate.
- Record feedback and complaints to identify trends and risks and report on changes made to improve services.
- Reflect on areas of patient and client care that are raised in feedback and complaints, including what could have been better and consider how lessons could be applied to practice and processes.
Support for burnout in health professions
The Ahpra website also has a list of general support services and specific support services for health professionals. This includes the Black Dog Institute’s TEN Navigating Burnout program developed specifically for health professionals to reduce the impact of burnout in a way that is sensitive to the unique challenges they face.
Read the checklist.
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