Patient Liaison and Advice Service (PALS)
Contact PALS if you need confidential advice or support on Freephone: 0800 032 0202
Patient and visitor information
Recent lessons learnt from complaints and concerns
The Trust continues to endeavour to ensure good feedback of learning points from complaints to Directorates and Departments, so that changes in policy and protocols and other practical improvements can be followed up to ensure these are achieved and the “loop closed”.
Examples of recent improvements
Some examples of recent improvements made to services and which arose from or which were associated with a complaint include:
Ear Nose & Throat. Pre-admission information for parents and carers of children has been revised to give specific advice regarding recommended transport arrangements following surgery and discharge.
Elderly Care. An information leaflet for relatives which details provision of food for elderly inpatients has been produced.
Accident & Emergency. To facilitate timely diagnosis and treatment a new blood testing kit has been introduced for use in the department and which is designed specifically to detect ketones in blood of patients with diabetes.
Women’s Services. Processes have been amended to ensure that information regarding antenatal test results are, as and when received, relayed to the appropriate doctor to action.
Rehabilitation. Service standards have been revised to ensure that when postnatal women, from out of the area and who require continuing physiotherapy, will receive the service on discharge
Surgery. The Hepatobiliary Unit now use a central database to track and monitor every planned biopsy or investigation to ensure that they take place within an appropriate timeframe.
Northern Centre for Cancer Care. Documentation has been developed and amended to ensure that following treatment, patients are returned to the referring hospital with all necessary nursing information regarding care and treatment documented. This will also form part of the Trustwide discharge policy.
Musculoskeletal Services. A review of the information given to patients prior to certain day case spinal procedures has resulted in adjustments to the advice given to clarify that patients will not be able to drive home immediately following their procedure.
Pharmacy Services. Recent introduction of fast track prescriptions and the introduction of pre-packed medication, has improved the timeliness of the discharge process for children who attend for day surgery.
Plastic Surgery. A DVD has been produced to assist patients in their decision making in respect of breast reconstruction.
Radiology. New software has been introduced to enable radiographic images to be copied and forwarded in a safe and secure electronic format.
Children’s Services. An enhanced information leaflet has been produced for parents whose child attends A&E suffering from a urinary tract infection.
Children’s Eye Clinic. New Information Leaflet produced for parents.
March 2011
